


The murderer writes the mystery

by AuntyAgonee



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Child Abuse, Multi, Murder, Mysterious authority figures, Post-apocalyptic AU, Quadrant -drama (quadrama?), Shabby parenting, Society reminiscent of Beforus, graphic death
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-02-04
Updated: 2015-05-04
Packaged: 2018-03-10 11:22:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 12
Words: 25,676
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3288509
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AuntyAgonee/pseuds/AuntyAgonee
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>For reasons not quite clear to her, Damara has just killed the only person in the village she is able to tolerate with her own hands, laid him out on  the Altar and sacrificed him to the nameless horror that owns her town. For reasons that are even foggier to her, she has just taken in his younger sibling, the painfully shy and disastrously clumsy Equius Zahhak, who is still too young to count to ten.<br/>Meanwhile, said nameless horror has begun to get restless. Trolls are disappearing, cancerous smokes coming off the forests and poisons filling the crops.<br/>Now, it's  a only question of whether Damara's secret will be unearthed before the village is destroyed.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. 17th Pieces, 20413

**Author's Note:**

> Every story I have ever read about Damara involves some kind of penetration with an instrument that isn't necessarily organic. In short, she is something of the fandom's sex-toy, along the same lines as the eternal virgin Cronus and the shipping-whore Karkat.  
> So, I thought to myself, what would Damara do in a story where she actually got a plot and shit? This is that plot. This is that shit.

17th Pieces, 20413

Your body disappeared overnight.  
I don’t know why it disturbs me to write that. Of course it was going to. The bodies always disappear overnight. If we’re lucky, they’ll leave a large stain, a dried smear of their colour crusting the Altar. A clue that they were there. A mark that must be actively cleaned to get off the stone, which the summer, winter, autumn and spring of rains, storms and sun will not remove before another stain covers it up. Layers upon layers of the reminders of the souls tossed into the ether to buy the village another year of life. Did it make you feel any better to know that I laid you down over those stains with as much reverence as I would have treated the body of any other sacrifice, perhaps with more? I suppose you were dead before I stretched you out. Or pretending to be, so you didn’t have to respond to my babble.  
There are smudges of you everywhere, like a thumb smeared through ink that has left prints all over the place. Crumbs that make a trail to the Altar, to my doorstep. No one ever investigates the deaths of those who end up on the Altar, do they? It’s strange for me to think that the only two people in this world, which could be vast, or limited to the exact boundaries of this town the way they tell us…out of everyone there may or may not be in the world, only you and I will ever know what really happened. In a twisted, gut-wrenching way it makes me happy to know there is something between us that can never be shared with anyone else.  
What makes me sad is the knowledge that I’ll never see you again. At least, I think that’s what affects me the most. Certainly it’s what makes the rest of our friends miserable. Meu is beside herself. I get the feeling she is just going through the motions right now, reading from the script to tell her how a moirail in mourning should act. It’s only been three days. She’s been your moirail for over half of her life. She doesn’t know how to react: who to be angry with (good thing for me), or how to miss you. She has never lost anyone so significant before.  
All of us are in shock. You were someone we never could have imagined we’d lose. You were like a column. A quiet voice of reason, a reserve of strength to draw upon, a reliable and comforting presence. Above all you knew how to fix things when they broke. Oh, you were certainly incredibly awkward and your social skills were proportional to ‘Pora’s romantic skills, but it kind of added to your shy charm.  
That’s the kind of things people have been saying. You were sweet. Smart, talented, good-looking. Wonderful to your moirail, supportive for your friends. They’ll forget about your temper. They’ll forget about the scandal we share.  
Another good thing about you: you loved Rufioh.  
More than I did. You treated him far better than I knew how to. He was happier with you, even if he never said it. But you did steal him. It’s alright. I mean- now it’s alright. I never really cared that much about him, but I doubt either of us would have ended the matespritship without having something better to jump into, another pair of arms to hide in. That’s right. You heard me Rus, I’m thanking you for being the other man. And I mean it.  
So.  
You’re dead, as you may have noticed, which has created more problems than it solved. First and foremost is the question of who will fix the machines when they break down, who will lift the heavy stuff and who will tend to the hoofbeasts. The village has been buzzing in a way similar to a hive of kicked stingbeasts for the last three days. Like I said, no one expected to lose you. It’s easy enough to give up generics like Ashvee Vokarr, the kind of person who was born just to be an extra in someone else’s life. It’s a relief to give up people like old Synder Cynick, who are just there to drink and make a nuisance of themselves. The fact that you weren’t nominated for the sacrifice is what irks people the most. I believe they want to investigate, but you and I know this village. They never will.  
What do we do now? We had better start reading his notes. Can anyone ever be as good as he was?  
The fools don’t even whisper.  
Not even when Equestrius is around. In fact, most of the village has forgotten there is another Zahhak at all. His grief has been utterly eclipsed by the village’s. Most have forgotten by now that Horuss Zahhak ever had a brother. We cannot put him in the orphanage, where the other displaced children go. Of course we can’t, not when your friends’ homes could be opened to him.  
The ideal situation would be one where we could stash him with Rufioh. After all, as your long-time matesprit your descendant was basically his descendant. Unfortunately, his blood-descendant is already quite a time-consuming project, what with the four-wheel device in this kind of environment. You know it won’t be possible for Rufioh to juggle not only his brat’s care and health at the same time as dealing with a grief-stricken child, especially not one who will remind him of the love he has lost. He simply doesn’t have the time, nor the strength (emotional and otherwise).  
Next would be Meu. It only makes sense. You’ve been her moirail since your tenth summer, and your descendants have been pale as pale gets since they first learned to pap. If only sense translated into practicality- again, you know this arrangement would never work. The only reason Meu is able to hold onto her crumb-crusher is because the kid is incredibly self-sufficient. She can do the things her deaf dancestor will never be able to do for her. Your Equestrius is not that kind of child. He is high-maintenance, frequently needing help for the smallest things owing to that unwieldy strength passed through your genes, he’s taciturn and will never ask for help when he needs it, as well as disastrously clumsy and painfully shy.  
Meu already has enough difficulty communicating with her deaf ear- the last thing she needs is a problem child with an inability to express his emotions added to her plate. She just wouldn’t be able to cope.  
No one else really fits the bill. ‘Pora and Pexies live underwater. Loz has his own nightmare to deal with, that little spaced-out nightmare of a child fate has foisted upon him –and all the children are scared silly of him anyway. Aranea’s brat has been trying to kill, skin and eat your kid since the day she learned to hold a knife. Tulip’s already got a blind descendant and two damaged, jumpy psionics crowding her hive. Porrim shouldn’t be allowed near children with the amount of clothing she wears. Kankri? What do I even need to say to denounce Kankri? Hearing his name is enough to make my ears ache.  
Which leaves me.  
I know, I know, it’s horrible, I should have gutted him too and left him beside you on the Altar, rather than subject him to the long trudge of the childhood he will have under my roof. What more can I give to you, Rus? Nothing really, being that you’re dead and eaten. I can give him something though. An authority figure. Room and board, free meals. I’ll do my best to keep him off the nominations list, but ultimately that will be down to him.  
Of the three days that have passed since your death, he has been here only one. I write this at the end of the third day. I spoke from experience when I described the short-comings that prevent Meu from being able to welcome him with open arms, but I promise you I have kept my temper in check, and surprisingly, I can say the same for him. Great gods, the child is so cautious I can’t imagine how he has managed to carve the path of shattered ceramics and splintered stone through the village that he has. He keeps his arms rigid at his side, his hands in his pockets. He never makes eye-contact, only through accident and each time, reacting as if he were struck or burnt.  
So far, he hasn’t touched me once. Not that I’m offering hugs, pats or high-fives, but he did give Meu and her kid a hug when he said goodbye to them. At the moment, he’s not sure what to think of me. He can form whatever opinion he pleases. What matters is that he’s here, under my protection.  
Isn’t it strange? I never could have predicted I would end up taking on the orphaned descendant of the man who took a matesprit from me (whom you were welcome to).  
Then again, I suppose I must take some form of responsibility when that descendant was orphaned by my own hands.

Yours,  
Damara Megido


	2. Pieces 20th, 20413

Pieces 20th, 20413

I wonder what it looks like in the mind of a child?  
I wonder what I must look like to your brother. I see no more and no less than myself when I catch sight of myself on the surface of the water. A woman with twenty-three summers under her belt. Or rather, a girl who clawed her way into womanhood. There were a few years when I came dangerously close to nomination. The first of them I remember well, being that it was the year Rufioh sought in you the happiness I could not provide him. Were you too distracted to notice how much weight I lost? How I turned away from most of the dishes set in front of me, how I swallowed water as if it had turned into sour vinegar in my mouth. How the smile vanished from my face and has rarely been seen since? But of course, it was not your fault. It was for the better. My better, your better, his better.   
But I digress. I am alive, thanks in no small part to you and your ceaseless efforts to pull me out of the pit I had dug for myself. And Equestrius? If you saw the way he reels away from me, Rus, you would think I had not given him a kind word since he set foot over the threshold. He must see a demon in me. With horns so different from his in shape, eyes as red as the beast’s and blood the colour of a dying sun, he must be terrified to think a creature such as me is allowed to exist.  
Once I asked him “Does my appearance offend you?” and he could not respond.  
He turned his eyes to the ground and pursed his lips in the manner of a child who has been caught pulling faces at his teacher.   
Does he ever speak? All I have managed to wring out of him have been a grand total of ten words, and all of them have related to some kind of apology. He only speaks when he dents a wall or cracks a door-frame or pulls off the handle of something then he shirks the shadows while he watches me repair the damage. It amazes me you accomplished anything worthy of note in the last five years with this child, this tornado, breathing down the back of your neck, Rus.  
I do not claim to be an expert on the handling of descendants, having lost mine before she cleared the six-summer mark, but I must wonder if I dodged the arrow by losing Ida? How could any being of with half a logical pan bring themselves to enjoy a descendant? Have you and I been short-changed with the little wreck thrust into our arms? I hope from wherever you watch, you appreciate the trouble I have gone in only the first six days to accommodate this child.  
This morning, a milestone of some kind was passed. I have noticed he sticks to his room for most of the day when he isn’t outside running around with Meu’s kid, but today, when I came down from my respiteblock he was sitting on the porch- the one that backs out onto that view of the fields, where I can watch the others toiling in the fields from a distance. The seeds were sewn earlier this year, and with spring still a couple lunar cycles away the fields were empty.  
“What’s so interesting?” I asked, not expecting a response.  
“Will they tear down the hive?”  
I nearly fainted. “Your hive?”  
“Yes.”  
“No. It will be left empty for the year.”   
“How come?”  
Why do children ask unnecessary questions? I have just realised I am expected to train this habit out of him. Won’t that be a joy “Why do you think?”  
His face remained blank, a mask “Because Rus is dead.”  
“And because you don’t live there anymore.”  
“What happens at the end of this year?”  
“They strip it down and use the materials for a new hive.”  
He has worried a sore in his bottom lip, he chews on it so much “Why can’t they leave it up for me? When I get older, I’ll have to get my own hive. Isn’t it my right to inherit what my brother left to me?”  
Taciturn, but remarkably well-spoken when he chooses to open his word-chute.  
“Other people will need it before you.” then I tried something more profound “Besides, your dancestor didn’t leave you the hive. He simply vacated the house. What he left you is what you already have.”  
He actually met my eyes, for a brief moment, through the screen of his hair “What?”  
I tapped my temple “Your memories. When people die, they leave possessions to be claimed by others and properties to be divided up by whoever comes along at the right time. That’s what happened to you. Your brother was in charge of you and when he died that responsibility was left to the rest of us. All he left to you are your memories.”  
He was silent for a long time after that. Then he stood up and left the hive without a word of goodbye, presumably to find Meu’s kid. I let him go over there alone because the distance is one can I trust a five-summers as strong as he is to walk by himself. I’m beginning to have second thoughts about my abilities. No, I do not regret taking him in yet. I owe you this much, Rus, to pick up your slack. I’m talking about my abilities to raise a child.  
Ida was with me for six months. In those six months, she did little more than release tonnes of noxious gas and kept me up multiple nights in a row. I remember the younger years. Lucky you, getting Equestrius towards the end of the cycle. You had summer to watch how it was done. Not that our friends should be counted as good role-models for anything, but eleven out of twelve grubs surviving to their fifth summers so far isn’t bad. After Ida, I never bothered much with the wrigglers, even when they grew into their doughy toddler bodies and started to talk and get into things and put stuff in their mouth never meant for consumption.   
They were underfoot all the time. Getting everywhere and anywhere. Annoying and invasive. Thieves of youth and time. Eighteen summers was always too young of an age to be given children. We had barely cast off the trappings of childhood ourselves. The tragedies of first loves and foolish dreams were still at our heels, much too close to make a wriggler a justifiable burden to add to the mix. We are the first generation to have to rear our descendants without the aid of a lusus. I have never felt the loss of the old bitch more keenly than now. She would know what to do with him. She didn’t make much noise about picking up the trails of mess I left in my wake, and this is what your brother is on the fast track to becoming: a mess.

(Later)  
It occurred to me I have yet to mention how our peers have reacted. Well, it should hearten you to hear that most of them have been utterly horrified by the situation. I suspect they might even have vetoed the whole thing if we hadn’t all been so busy, rushing around to get your affairs in order. Isn’t that a bit arrogant of you, to not have some kind of plan in order in case of your death? On the night of the sacrifice I was ready to ransack your hive to find a will or something similar, but by the time I had reached your hive Equestrius had raised the alarm that you were missing, and Kankri was sitting with him while the other began to search. I tell you, the run I had to get back to my hive and set it up so that it appeared I had just been sitting around smoking and reading while disaster struck, I felt I was going to die from the exertion by the time I got back.  
Adrenalin flooded me to such an extent that I couldn’t sit still for the rest of the night. Good thing for me too- it made me seem enthusiastic about the search for you. And it made it seem less out of the blue when I finally suggested what everyone else was praying could be avoided: to check the Altar. So we did. Rufioh and Meu accompanied me. Of course, approaching the Altar is strictly forbidden. Meu and Rufioh never would have done it without a need as great as the need to find you. And me? I was already a bundle of nerves. In truth, it actually excited me.  
The prospect of seeing your body with the other two, the most important people in your life (save the kid), and putting on a show of shock and grief, vowing revenge upon the criminal who had taken your life. I was hoping I might have the chance to see the beast too. I’m beginning to wonder if that is the real reason I killed you. The desire to see the beast that has eaten so many of the village over the years, including my own sister? But I doubt it. Besides, what’s the good in angst-ing over my true motives? What’s done is done and it has been done in such a way that no one will ever know the true culprit.  
By the time we had arrived, the sun had sunk past the forest. The last streaks of a red twilight carved through the night, but the moon was not yet strong enough to properly illuminate our way. Rufioh could have flown ahead. Out of fear, he did not. Perhaps he was afraid the two of us would disappear too if he let us out of his sight? I don’t think he would miss me much.   
Our timing was perfect. Just as we crested the hill, the beast’s great claw was piercing through your stomach. Blood poured sluggishly from you and it was in that moment that I knew I had done it. I had taken your life and there is not a thing we can do or say to change the fact. The beast- few have ever seen it, and now we three are counted among that rare few- was indescribable. Most of what I saw was its shadow, a suggestion of how it might look. But what a shadow. Far from the great, hulking thing I have imagined since I was a child, it was thin and sharp, like that scarecrow in the fields had come to life. Its digits were as tall as I am, like spears. The eyes. Ghostly points of light I have seen a dozen times before in the borders of the forest as night falls, what I had always thought were the farmers’ lanterns because they would draw so close to the houses. Now I know better.  
Those eyes caught us in a searchlight. Rufioh and Meu gasped and I couldn’t help but gasp too. Rufioh recognised who was on the Altar first and he cried out your name. He must have expected a response, for you to snap awake and beat the monster into submission. Instead, the beast slid your corpse off towards the forest.  
I did not fake my tears. Something about the finality of your departure was so devastating…so dark…I will see that moment on a loop in my nightmares for a good portion of my life. While the other two stood frozen, I turned around to look at the lights of the village in the valley beneath us. A smattering of hives and towers nestled in the cleft between two cliffs. The whole place was afire with gold and orange lamp-lights. On the night of the sacrifice, people never use the mains power, as you know. I think I’m beginning to understand why we never use electricity on this night. It would be rude to the beast.  
We went back home. There was nothing else we could do. It was obvious you were dead before we came and with your body inching its way down the gullet of the beast, the only productive thing to do was to inform the rest of the village that this year’s nomination, good old useless Snyder Cynick, was free for this year. There were accusations. Everyone blamed Snyder, then everyone searched for someone else to blame. They never even considered one of Rus’s good friends might be responsible for his death.  
I left them to fight it out amongst themselves. On the way home, I had come to the conclusion that it was my job to take Equestrius in. I made a point of going with Meu when she gave him the bad news. He didn’t cry. He shrugged, as if we were telling him old news, then he went up to his room and stayed there for the rest of the night. I have yet to see him cry.  
The next two days were full of debates which ended with Equestrius on my doorstep, as expected. Since then, every single one of our friends has turned up at the hive or cornered me while I was out in the town to ask after him, and to a lesser extent after me. I tell them we are both doing as well as expected, and when they remark on Equestrius’ grim attitudes, I remind them we’re still becoming accustomed to each other. I fear I will be sucked into the vacuum of the dancestors, into endless household chores and mopping up a filthy descendant. I understand why they stick together so much; just as sheep will cluster together in the dark to shield themselves from a wolf, the dancestors cling to each other to avoid acknowledging the true weight of the task our generation has been handed.   
It must make them feel better to think they’ll be ok, as long as half of the people their age have to do the same thing. Oh, sweet gods, I have had a vision of the future. Me, with lank hair and pasty skin, trading feeding tips at a crowded kitchen table with a bunch of other dishevelled ‘mommy’s and ‘daddy’s. Blech. I’d rather gnaw my own legs off- the situations would be equal in the level of pain I would experience. If you ever see me headed that way, by all means please pop out of the ether and decapitate me before it’s too late.

Yours,  
Damara Megido


	3. Pieces 21st 20413

Pieces 21st 20413

A quick note today, Rus.  
I thought you might like to know you’ve been replaced. Timber Maa’enn (remember her from school? Perpetually orange with a sunburn and picking at her numerous, pus filled zits) is going to be taking over your position as the general handyman, although the gods know she’ll never come close to filling your shoes. We’re in for a long, cold, hungry winter with her on our side, my friend. I wish you’d thought to download your consciousness into a soul-bot. A spare Rus. Really, did you think you were going to get away without a back-up plan? Look what’s happened.  
The machines will go hay-wire and your brother is the very last instalment of an ancient, proud blood-line. You’d better get down on your knees and pray he survives to spread his seed. I couldn’t tell you what dancestor in the village would allow their precious baby to procreate with the disaster of a man he’ll grow up to be- or to even get close enough to him to consider procreation. I suppose there’s Meu’s kid, but that looks pale through and through to me. Not that I know all that much about the pale quadrant, do I? Never had a moirail. Great gods is that ever a pathetic thing to say.   
Actually on the subject of the gods, I was wondering if you’ve met any of them yet.   
Your Patron god, Void, how about him?   
Wouldn’t it be strange if after all those debates we had about theology and the fundamental uselessness of the construct of a god in these godless times if they turned out to be there, watching us from just above the cloud cover after all?


	4. Pieces 24th 20413

Pieces 24th 20413

I haven’t had the time to do much of anything recently, so you’ll have to forgive the lateness of this instalment of our correspondence. You would not believe the mess in the town.  
But first and foremost, did you know your brother is a coward?  
After all, what other name can we give to a child who has lost his only blood-sibling to the nameless beast that may take another loved one from him in less than a year, who is all alone in the world, and yet, despite his fearlessness in the face of this, who still cowers under his bed when a storm blows in?  
The storm clouds had been hanging over us all afternoon. Groaning with thunder, pregnant with rain- obviously, all hell was going to break loose. I was enlisted by a few of our peers to help them batten down the hatches of various buildings near the main square. For about two hours, I was stuck in the hospital reassuring the old seniles, years past their sell-by-dates, that the storm was not a sign of the beast’s anger at the unceremonious sacrifice of this year while Loz and Tulip readied the defences. The children buzzed with excitement. This would be the first storm in conscious memory for them. The last storm with such magnitude I can remember, some of them weren’t even born then. It was the night Ida was taken away, of course.  
Equestrius didn’t say much, as usual. He stared at the small hurricane assembling over our heads with the distant interest with which one might watch a trail of ants carrying off a large bug. Looking at him then, I was relieved. He didn’t seem afraid, unlike Kankri’s kid who was hiding under a desk for most of the day, scared by the thunder or possibly by being confronted with something even louder than him. Well, Equestrius can have points for at least pretending not to be scared.  
But when the storm broke? So did his courage.  
We were at home. Dinner was finished, so were the dishes. I had turned down a few invitations to wait out the storm in other hives (which I suspect were more for Equestrius’s benefit than mine), and was reading by lamplight when the power went out. Equestrius was sitting on the floor towards the corner and tinkering with something spindly. I saw him freeze in the gloom and retreat completely into the corner.  
“Damara?” it was the first time he had used my name.  
“Afraid of the dark?” I stood and made my way to the closet, where I keep the lanterns “Stay put. It’s just the wind.”  
“What happened?”  
I explained patiently how the storm’s winds had likely knocked down the power-lines that brought electricity to the house, that there were no problems apart from the loss of light because we cooked on a woodstove and the bath was fire-heated and there are plenty of lanterns. Privately, I wondered if some of the others’ children were reacting with similar fear, or if ours was just over-reacting. I lit the living room with a lantern and watched him in the orange light, shrunken into the corner. He ducked his head in shame and hid behind his knees.  
“Are you afraid of the dark?”  
“No.”  
“Then what are you doing?”  
He shrugged. As if on cue, a flash of lightning lit up the room through the storm-blinds. Thunder followed, as loud as the beast’s roar. Equestrius flinched.  
“Come here.”  
From the look he gave me, you’d think I’d asked him to rip out his own spine. But he got up, obediently, and came over to me very carefully. He sat down at the extreme edge of the couch. The next thunder crash knocked him off the edge. He may or may not have punched a small hole in the floor. I’m not sure. I haven’t had the chance to check yet.  
We sat side-by-side for a long time. Lightning slotted through the blinds. Thunder shook the floorboards. Wind hammered at the walls. Crashes echoed in the distance as trees and infrastructure bowed to the storm. He held his knees to his chest, his eyes trained on the floor. I tried to read, but it was kind of hard to concentrate with a shivering child craning away from me on the other end of the couch. What more did he want from me to ease his fear? Well I certainly didn’t know what else to try, so I didn’t try anything else for fear of spooking the poor kid.  
We sat side-by-side late into the night. Obviously, he was far too scared to go to his room on his own and his head had begun to nod off then jerk upright again as he fought off sleep. Bless, it was like watching an animal in a trap fighting off the darkness of unconsciousness, knowing it would never wake up again. It does pain me to wonder if he might have thought I would gut and skin him if he dropped off around me. What am I going to do with him if he doesn’t feel safe enough to sleep around me? You know I tried the door to his room last night, intending to check in on him, and no sooner had my hand touched the knob was it impossible to move. I strained against it for a few minutes and it finally occurred to me to look under the door, in case there was a chair blocking my path in. You won’t believe this. Equestrius was on the other side, holding the door-knob so I couldn’t get in.  
My voice leapt down my throat when I realised this, so I did not reprimand him in the strong manner I ached to. The satisfaction it would have given me to kick that bloody door in? Immeasurable. He seems to forget this is my bloody hive, not the mechanic’s wet dream where he was raised. This is my bloody hive and I have the right to enter a room that I have owned for twenty three summers and that he has had the privilege of occupying for a grand total of a week. What does he think I’m going to do to him? You know for a moment when I was trying the door I was terrified something horrible had happened to him. The endless ways he could injure himself with his insane strength have begun to torment me in my usual night-terrors.  
Has he ever pulled a bookshelf down on himself? His little neck would snap like a dry twig, wouldn’t it? It was as easy for you to snap a limb and crack a calcium-stick as it was for the rest of us before you reached your tenth summer. If I remember correctly, you broke your left arm when you fell out of that tree and then you broke a bit of me when I cushioned your landing.  
That was a good weekend.  
Well, back to the storm night.  
I offered to walk him up to his room after he fell off the couch sideways and almost fell asleep again on his climb up. He declined, saying he was happy to stay awake for as long as I was going to. I informed him I intended to stay up for the rest of the night just in case the storm decided to knock the roof of the hive in on our heads. He asserted he was no stranger to sleep deprivation, and with him being just past his fifth summer I can only assume sleep deprivation for him must mean missing his afternoon nap. Repeating this sentiment to him, I shooed him with my book and caused him to tumble off the couch yet again and this time he did create a sizeable dent. He apologised, poorly concealing the fact that he thought I was about to strike him with the book, then scurried upstairs like a squeakbeast that had just been nipped in the ass.  
Fearing for the condition of the floors, I followed him upstairs. I waited in the hall while he shot into the bathroom (he snapped his toothbrush) then into his room, but I put my foot in the door before he could shut it on me. The two of us surveyed each other for a moment while the thunder rolled overhead. I cannot tell you what he was thinking, but I can tell you I was screaming internally and wishing to Kami-sama and his various counterparts I hadn’t got in the way of such a strong push.  
“Are you going to sleep or are you going to crawl under your bed and weep with your hoofbeast plush pushed over your face?” I asked.  
From the way his lip trembled I’m guessing it was the second option.  
“Would you like me to spend the night in here?”  
Both of us would have been much happier if I had never asked, but it was too late to suck the question back into my mouth. It was out there and we stood at a cross-roads. If Equestrius refused my offer, he ran the risk of throwing (from his perception) an attempt to bond from his new and only permanent guardian back in my face if he refused. If I withdrew the offer I ran the risk of finding an exhausted child lolling on the floor of his coon and falling asleep in his breakfast.  
He nodded.  
So I stepped into his room.  
He hadn’t unpacked. The boxes of his books were still pushed into the corners. The shelves were bare. The only thing which had been used was the closet and only sparingly, with some of his clothes packed into the dresser and a couple of coats hung up too. His plush was on the bed. The sheets were not. He’s been sleeping under the bed for a full seven days.  
What the heck is wrong with your brother, Rus?  
I don’t pretend I was interested when you talked about him to me. In fact, most of the descendant related talk I tuned out and imagined myself engaging in various sexual escapades with some of the prettier nurses at the hospital. Now I wish I had listened. I may have to resort to actually asking Meu or Rufioh if he has ever done something so weird before.  
Well, when I came in his was pretty deft about getting the bedding back on the bed. He got under the covers and tucked himself in tightly. His room is so far pretty poorly furnished, so I had to make a space for myself in the window box. He tossed me a blanket, then turned to face the wall and said nothing for about half an hour. I sat there, bathed in the lightning that shone through the shutters, and watched him for the longest time.  
The funny thing is I can’t remember what I was thinking. Perhaps I thought if I peered hard enough at him I could see through the layers of tissue into his mind and read his thoughts. It’s been driving me crazy, not knowing what to say to my strange little guest.  
You should be proud of your little weirdo. He’s been taking his hormones for that hyperhidrosis that goes with your crazy strength as religiously as the repentant flagellate, without a word of it to me. Rufioh took me aside and explained about his condition when we were deciding, warning me he was going to be more challenging than I thought. Rufioh’s been poking his button nose into my business a lot since Equestrius came. I have no idea what he hopes to accomplish.  
I read somewhere that spirits are able to commune through dreams with the living, and if this is true, would it be a terrible burden for me to ask you to pop into your matesprit’s skull and tell him to mind his own fucking business? I may not know exactly what I’m doing, but I’m damn sure I can do it much better than Mr Bangarang. For the life of me I will never know what you saw in him. Your time was wasted on him, Rus, and it saddens me you’ll never have the chance to come to terms with that while you had the means to do something about it. But now you’re dead and you died as Rufioh’s matesprit, and you’ll never have the chance to be with anyone else in the red quadrant, unless the gods permit that kind of carnal hanky-panky in the bubbles.  
But I digress. I seem to be getting distracted by myself a lot in these letters. Is it me, or am I far more interesting and conflicted than the length of my skirt and my general behaviour may have led the general audience to believe? Ha. You’re right: I don’t think so either.  
So back to the subject of your little brother, it turned out he was pretending to be asleep to avoid interacting with me, but he gave himself away by flinching when a particularly loud thunderclap sounded directly overhead. It was like a gunshot right in my ear. The ringing was so intense for a moment in one ear I hardly noticed he was talking to me at first.  
“Are you afraid of the dark?” he didn’t look at me.  
“Of course not. I’m twenty three summers old.”  
He turned over and gave me a look of confusion “How old are you when you stop being afraid of things?”  
For a moment I couldn’t reply, from the shock. I have never seen a blueblood that young glow before. His eyes glowed in the dark and the spray of freckles across the bridge of his nose were lit up too, although I don’t suppose I have to tell you that. I never knew bluebloods’ spark-spots grew in so early. He looked like a jack-o-lantern with a blue-burning candle stuck in his mouth.  
“Depends on the person,” I drew my pipe and was about to light up when it occurred to me the smoke might not be good for him in such close quarters. Look at me. Thinking like a dancestor already. Don’t want him growing up smoke-stained as well as socially crippled, do we, Rus?  
“I thought we are born with a fear of the darkness.” he starts to fidget with the hem of his shirt when he’s anxious. A couple of his shirts have a hole in the bottom of them where his thumbnail worried right through the fabric “Something bred into us by alchemy to change our natures. We used to be a nocturnal race, right?”  
He knows his cultural history, I’ll give him that “That’s true, but even the most base instincts are easily overcome, aren’t they? The impulse to kill for example. You are aware that the old Alternian society not only condoned bloody and casual killing, but encouraged it?”  
He gulped “We’re different now. We work together.”  
“Just because that caste system was abolished doesn’t mean there isn’t a reason to hate each other.”  
“A reason?” he repeats “What reason?”  
The complexities of adult and teenage relationships are far too complex for me to summarise for a little kid. He’ll understand it when he gets there and then he can have the joy of experiencing it for himself.  
“There are enough.”  
“Are we afraid of the dark or afraid of what we used to be?” he blurted.  
“Go to sleep.” I told him “There’s no use in working yourself up into a tizzy over such trivial matters right now. You can discuss it all you want with your little playmates tomorrow, but for now, you had better put your head on that pillow and concentrate on your 40 winks.”  
He did as he was told.

(Later)  
I’ll ask you to forgive the pause even though you won’t have noticed it, but I had to go off and pick Equestrius out of the hole in the ground I dug for a sapling I’m about to plant. Don’t worry- I’ll put up a net later so he’ll bounce straight back up. Boing.  
Anyway, the last part of this account involves me passing the night huddled with my back to the storm shutters. I woke up with the pattern of the blinds imprinted on my face. I crept out of the room before he woke up. He looks like a corpse when he sleeps. He lies on his back and folds his hands on his stomach and I had to look twice to confirm he was breathing. Then I pinched his nose and watched him snort and cough in his sleep. Remember I used to do that to you? Gods, you slept like a rock when you did sleep. The only way to wake you up was to imitate the sound of your alarm clock or to use my more extreme method of pinching your nose shut, splashing some water in your face and shouting “YOU’RE DROWNING RUS!!”  
I didn’t do that to him of course.  
Satisfied by his reaction, I let him be. He slept through most of the morning, even when Rufioh came by.  
Let that settle in. Rufioh stopped by.  
Rufioh Nitram. I nearly fainted when I found him on my doorstep. It didn’t help that I was still dishevelled from my night spent balanced on the storm shutters, with my hair curly and messy and pushed up at one side like the crest of a bird and my dressing-gown rumpled nearly all the way up my thighs.  
“Just checking in.” he said.  
“I haven’t eaten him.” I framed myself in the doorway “He’s alive and well.”  
“Is he?” Rufioh glanced past me, as if Equestrius might be cowering behind me in the hall, desperate for a glimpse of his almost-dancestor “Can I see him?”  
Oh how I wanted to kick him down the hill right then. But I didn’t. I glare at him, straightened my collar (realising with a faint horror he could see my nipples pressing through my gown) and let him in.  
“What’s the dent in the floor? Have you been using him as a ball?”  
Equestrius was out of bed in a flash. He was at the top of the stairs. From the look they gave each other, you’d think I some witch that had locked the kid up in a tower and Rufioh was (as he likes to believe) the prince coming to his rescue.  
They embraced and Rufioh scooped him up, then took him on a walk, Equestrius in only his pyjamas and a coat way too long that Rufioh put on him to shelter him from a cold his blood temperature doesn’t allow him to feel. All these cutesy look-at-me-I’m-dancestoring gestures that make my teeth ache from the sugary sweetness of it.  
They were out for a while. I changed into something more respectable so Rufioh didn’t have more cause to criticise me when and if he brought the kid back. Oh, that reminds me you may have spent some time worrying about my wardrobe. Well rest assured I’ve put away the short, short skirts and the plunging necklines for now. Yes, without having an outside party tug me aside and awkwardly explain to me why it might not be a good idea to dress like the Queen Slut with a child of five-summers under my care now. I’m in jeans and T-shirts all day. You know what? I haven’t worn a kimono in a while. Do I even still have them? I can’t remember if they’re still lying around or if I’ve made them all into curtains.  
In the end, he did bring the kid back. Clearly he still intends to be a part of Equestrius’s life, and I mean an actual part of it, not one of those people who swings in and out of the picture on a vine when it suits them. That’s fine by me as long as he doesn’t try to overstep his boundaries. Ok, no it’s not really fine by me because Rufioh and I get along like an acid sack and a vicious, carnivorous parasite do, and the last thing I want this to become is some kind of weird, pseudo-split-up-matesprits-sharing-a-descendant thing. But it will be good for Equestrius to see him.  
When he returned, he was smiling after all. Didn’t know he could.  
What have I been doing for the past couple of days? Just chilling I guess. Repairing the storm damage. Dodging around the kid. Thinking about the harvest. The usual stuff.  
Well I should be going, as I’ve run out of things to say. Hope you’re having a good time in the afterlife.

Yours,  
Damara Megido


	5. Pieces 26th 20413

26th 20413

He’s outside playing with Meu’s kid.   
Meu’s kid has started to come over here too. A lot of them have. It won’t be long before I have the whole Pieces pack of twelve running around, covering the floor in dirty footprints and wiping their noses on the drapes. When he lived with you, he was obscenely shy, wasn’t he? I understand he was more at ease with you to some degree since it was you who had raised him up, but even among his peers whom he has also known from birth he seems to hang on the fringes.   
Equestrius avoids eye-contact and when he does have to meet someone’s eyes, he does it through a curtain of hair hanging in his face so it is hard to look back at him. He will shirk the shadows and rarely speak unless spoken too. His refusal to allow himself to be touched borders on fearful of contact and I’m beginning to wonder if you, the ideal dancestor, had some hand in making him this way? Wouldn’t it be a brutal kind of irony if it turned out I saved him from a horribly abusive dancestor with my impulsive murder?  
Kidding.   
You’d never lay a hand on your kid. You rarely laid a hand on anyone in all the time I knew you, unless there was a genuinely good reason and sometimes a crowd ringing you that were egging you on. It must be that crazy strength of his, making him afraid of himself and therefore what he can to do others with it, that compels him to stick to the back of the crowd. Or some other deep-seated emotional problem. I don’t pretend to be familiar with the intricacies of a child’s psyche. For all I know, he could have found some incredibly creative and convoluted way to blame himself for your death. 

Yours,   
Damara Megido


	6. Pieces 27th 20413

Pieces 27th 20413

The kid must have perceived the night I spent smooshed on his storm-shutters as some kind of milestone in the dancestor-descendant dynamic. How ironic that I bitched about his shyness for an entire letter yesterday, and the next day he goes and does something like this. I’m probably setting you up for a bigger surprise than you’re going to get. Well, I apologise for the suspense, because this is altogether unremarkable really, just a mundane little thing you can catch any family playing at.  
You remember my garden?  
One of the few things I put a genuine effort into. I’ve never really known why and I’m not too interested in an investigation, but it’s always given me a deep kind of satisfaction to watch green, purple and orange shoots push up through the black earth. Having said it that way, it’s probably a phallic association, but whatever.  
I enjoy watching my garden grow throughout the year. During the fall, my yard gets a free make-over from the carpet of brilliant blue and red leaves, dropped for the season. During the winter, the evergreens are a pleasant sight under their cloaks of snow and I enjoy staring at the clear, black patch of earth where I have planted my crops and flowers and thinking about how wonderful they’re going to look when they come up in the spring and summer, what a nice way it is to present Mother Nature with a middle-finger in her gnarled, rooty face. That’s right you old bitch: guess who made it through another of your winters!  
Anyway, I never expected a similar interest in growing things out of Equestrius. I still do believe he is going to follow in your footsteps and preference for the in-organic, robots and whatnot, but he may pay attention to the growing world too.  
I was weeding the garden when he came out of the house (tripping over the threshold) and asked me what I was doing. What I was doing was kneeling in the dirt in work-clothes, with a smudged face and the head of a weed in my hand.  
“I’m weeding the garden.” I said.  
“Oh.” he said.  
He then sat down on the steps of the porch and watched me. I could feel his eyes on me like a fly crawling on my back. It even made me itchy. Finally, I turned around and suggested he go play somewhere else.  
“What’s that?” he ignored me entirely, nodding towards a leafy, thick-stemmed plant.  
“It’s daisibane.”   
“What does it do?”  
“Makes you shit your guts out and die.”  
You’d think this would scare him off, but if anything it only intrigued him more “Why are you growing it?”  
“Because it’s only poisonous in its raw form. If you boil it with lemongrass it makes an antidote that destroys the most basic protein in snake venom, so I can basically cure any kind of snake bite with this.”  
His eyes went wide behind his glasses “Are there snakes here?”  
“There are snakes all over the place.” I pointed to the edge of the garden “I saw a five foot pythaconda over there the other day.”  
He gulped. I didn’t know he was afraid of snakes.   
I remember you were completely terrified of snakes. A surprising amount of my memories of you and me in our early childhood involves me holding a snake by the head and chasing you with it around someone’s garden. I’ll accept the blame for making you mortally afraid of snakes, but I have to wonder how it infected Equestrius too.  
Call me mischievous, but seeing the terror on his face I just had to push it a little further “Sometimes they get into the downstairs bathroom too. One time, I tell you I almost lost an arm to this diamond-faced asp that was basking in the bathtub. I had to fight it off one-handed with a trowel.” then I showed him that scar I have from the time I tripped over a rake in Rufioh’s yard and needed seven stitches.  
Apparently he doesn’t know the difference between a rake-scar and a snakebite.   
I figured that would scare him off to the relative safety of his room, but he stayed glued to the porch. Eventually, he got up the courage to ask me about another plant. Before I knew it I was giving him a little lesson in herbology, showing him what was good to eat and explaining how he should prepare it, what was down-right poisonous and what would blossom and glow at night while we all sleep.  
Towards the end he even helped me pull out the rest of the weeds. There was one that had been clinging so stubbornly I was about to get out the snippers I use on the trees. Equestrius tugged the stem and pulled the thing out in one, smooth movement, although he showered us both with flecks of dirt. Surprisingly he didn’t destroy any of my plants. You know maybe he’s got a better handle on this strength problem than we’ve given him credit for. At least when it comes to the care of actively living things. After all, he hasn’t broken that moirail of his yet.  
Well our little bonding exercise was over the moment she turned up. He brushed the dirt on his palms onto the grass and left with a promise to be back before dinner. I wish Meu would keep him over there one night, or even Rufioh. It’s such a production to get dinner cooked at the same time every night, get it laid out on the table and then get the plates washed before I can do anything else, otherwise the full sink drives me crazy. Not to mention I have to make sure he’s eating properly, getting his proteins and what not. I swear, that boy drinks his weight in milk every day. He refuses to touch meat even though you, the enforcer of vegetarianism, are gone. Maybe it’s because he can’t look at a bit of meat without thinking about the way you were eaten?  
I know I’ve been having trouble with my appetite lately.  
Those spotlights. I never knew how much of the beast I actually saw until I knew what to look for. Last night, I saw the lights of its eyes hovering above the treeline. I stared at those eyes for a long time. They’re easily mistaken for a pair of the larger stars, or even one of the moons. How many nights does it watch us? How many nights have I spent sleeping peacefully, not knowing the monster which will keep me trapped in this village for the rest of my life stood only a few miles away?   
It’s so fucking tall. Stories high. Higher than the treeline, maybe even taller than that old, gnarled tree we used to play on in the hunting parks. Remember how it was squat at the bottom and then it sort of flowed into a hundred hands at the top?   
I can’t think about that tree now without picturing the beast.  
I can’t do much of anything without picturing the beast now.


	7. Pieces 29th 20413

Pieces 29th 20413

Controversy!  
I suppose you were just such an asset to the village that instead of going with the traditional method of community grieving by accepting it silently and getting on with our lives, trying to ignore the gaps you have left, we’re going to try something new and exciting. Mud-slinging. In short, the village has applied its sluggish, collective conscious to trying to divine who out of the ever-dwindling population had such a mighty beef with you as to find reason to actually end your life.   
I never thought they had it in them to rally like this, certainly not over matters concerning the beast and the Altar. I must wonder; is it the sting of losing such a versatile, intelligent member of the community out of the blue when we expected to sacrifice a man who had earned his nomination that has driven them to this? Or were they waiting for an opportunity to seize control of something for once in their lives, to attempt to affect a change that could create the effect that the village was governing itself for once?   
Of course, the beast’s presence is inescapable. The usual intimidation tactics are still popular in case you wondered; with the strong winds carrying whispers that cause everyone to look towards the forest and watch the treeline shiver as the thing scratches its great ass on a trunk or something, the sense of dread and foreboding that hits us in the go-zones of the forest as we draw closer to the no-go zones. Something new too; a strange smell of ash.   
The first time it happened, I thought there must have been an unscheduled bonfire going on in town. Out of curiosity, I went into town to check and found a square packed with frozen villagers, their jaws slack in terror. Smoke has begun to rise out of the forest at some point between the time I left the hive and when I arrived in the square. And I don’t mean a thin line of smoke that comes from a campfire, or even the clouds that come from a bonfire. I mean the sky was grey. For a moment, I was genuinely concerned.  
A forest fire? In the spring, when the village braves the fierce storms that characterise the season to collect the fruits of our struggles that are just starting to climb from the earth? The veritable bounty the go-zones of the forest hold for us too? Were we going to lose all that to jumping sparks and hungry fires brewing inside the trees?  
(I remember the year a fire wiped out a fourth of the fields, way back when we were only pre-teens and still innocent of the true meaning of the word ‘hunger’, and I remember the winter that taught us even more vividly)  
I was even a tad worried about Equestrius and co, since the kids like to play at the fences where the borders of the forest begin. Before you ask, yes I’ve given him the standard warning about staying away from the unfenced areas around the Altar at all costs, lest he be devoured by the same Beast that took you from him, or if he survives the experience, lest I tan his stupid hide to leather and fashion myself a pair of boots. I’m like a broken record now, the amount of warnings I have to call after him every time he leaves the house.  
Ah yes we were talking about the smoking forest, weren’t we?  
Well upon closer inspection it proved that the forest was doing exactly that: smoking. The square remained filled for a few moments while people searched for the flicker of fire behind the trees, listened for its roar and crackle and sniffed for the ash. The ash we did get, as I mentioned, but none of the other smells that accompany a forest fire like scorched ferns and roasting tree sap and that strange, almost medicine-like odour you get when you burned that three-leafed weed we are forbidden from touching.   
Someone had just gotten around to suggesting one of us went to investigate the forest when Porrim dashed into the square and announced while the forest was burning, there was no fire. She had even brought a branch to prove it.  
This was truly a strange thing to witness. Porrim held the branch, which bubbled and boiled as if there were a fire underneath its skin. However, it was not hot to the touch. I was the first to confirm this. I went up to Porrim and gave the branch a poke with my bare skin, very stupidly. Since then a painful sore has formed on my finger, something like a blister or a callous that has been ripped open. As much as this pains me to admit, Porrim was the one who had the foresight to wear gloves to handle the boiling material, despite the strange coolness of it.  
After seeing what Porrim had to show, it only steeled their resolve to find out who had killed you. Later this afternoon, the town Head announced there would be an investigation. He even used the old PA system to call the whole village into the square. There aren’t that many of us to take up the space, but we still manage to fill up the entire square when we gather. Even the descendants were there. As you know, after the batch of forty that was released five or so summers ago (ours), there has only been one more batch of children, and those were given to the most recent crop of eighteen-summers.  
Believe it or not, the head was almost drowned out by the wrigglers’ crying. The forest still smoked and fumes had begun to collect over the village, like low-hanging thunderclouds. Some of the new dancestors had had the foresight to bind a piece of cloth loosely around their charges’ mouths to block the fumes, but the majority rocked theirs in quiet bewilderment as the coughs started, glancing at us older dancestors desperately.  
‘Pora advised a couple to put something around their descendant’s mouths (I noticed he had his brat wearing a stripy scarf over his nose) and corrected a couple who were holding their wrigglers upside-down. I don’t think he was listening to the address at all. If he asks me what was said, I’ll point him towards Equestrius. The kid’s eyes were as wide as dinner plates and he absorbed every single word.  
There’s little point in recording it for you, but to make a long story short the town head believes the shenanigans observed today can be blamed upon the crime that was committed on the offering night.   
Since placing you on Altar busted all kinds of rules, the Head believes we have angered the beast with our foolishness and wanton violence. I considered the prudency of telling the old asshat that nothing of the sort had happened when my Ida was popped on the Altar to be gobbled up like a berry in the place of the more hefty meal Dcimbr Chrese would have made, and that no one had ever bothered to investigate the circumstances surrounding her abduction and death, but where would that have got me? Probably in the spotlight of suspicion, knowing the way this town thinks of me.  
A lot of glares were directed and Synder Snyder. He made no excuses or retorts. To his credit, he just stood up straight and kept his eyes trained on the Head on his podium, even when the Head himself gave him a sharp look. The easiest way this unexpected fiasco can end is for the investigation to begin (conducted by the Head and a few of his advisors, I’d imagine) make as little progress as trollish-ly possible, for the interest and motivation to fizzle out in a couple of weeks when the first harvest of the year demands the attention of the authorities.   
Or maybe the head is going for the quickest fix possible and he intends to throw Snyder into the woods headfirst. That would at least slake the apparent bloodlust of the town at your loss and shove the issue of the Altar to the back of their minds, where it belongs.  
If the latter happens, it may be good for Equestrius.  
It hadn’t occurred to me until I watched him at the square today that he might be afraid there was something behind your death. A grudge of some kind which might compel your killer to come after him, in an attempt to eradicate what’s left of the Zahhak bloodline. The genealogy files in the Archives don’t seem like the proper reading material for a child of five summers to me, but who knows? He might have brushed up on his ancestors at some point, or maybe you told him. At any rate he somehow knows that the blood of the Executioner Darkleer is not too far into the family’s past, so his young mind might have created some ragged kind of survivor monster that has crept out of the forest to settle and old score with what remains of Darkleer’s blood. And of course, I’m sure the notion that he is living in the same town as the person that killed his brother is probably terrifying. I’m equally sure he has no idea how close the killer really is, and I’m sure he’d never guess that his breakfast has been made by them for the past –how long has it even been? I’ve  
Hopefully, he won’t do something stupid.  
At the moment there is no real investigation going on. The Head only announced that one would be launched in the future, then he told us we should all stay inside when we could and wear something to filter the air when we are in the fields or the go-zones in the forest or conducting business in the town. He has also announced that as soon as the forest stops smoking, hopefully tomorrow, the go-zones are going to have to be checked out by someone who knows what they’re doing before people can eat from them again.  
You’ll never guess what ‘someone who knows what they’re doing’ means.  
It means me.  
I suppose the herb garden at the back of the house gives the impression I’m some kind of expert, since I’m the only one who keeps a herb garden outside the greenhouses in the storage Centres. Basically, they want me to run by all the go-zones tomorrow and make sure nothing has turned obviously poisonous or festersome. All five zones. I’m going to have to stick Equestrius with Rufioh or Meulin for the day. Maybe I’ll toss him in the lake for Pexies’ wriggler-sitting pleasure. Life was so much easier and less worrisome when I didn’t have a hard-shelled limpet attached to me, sucking up food, being such a hassle to shelter.   
If it weren’t for the smoke coming off the forest, I would have just left him to his own devices for a while and let whoever wanted to make a fuss, make a fuss and feed him lunch. Add the random smoke to the alleged investigation that is pending and it is basically impossible for me to relax for a second or someone offers a bitter criticism of my parenting abilities in the guise of polite advice. Have no fear. Whatever this smoke on the forest turns out to be, Equestrius is in safe, if grudging, hands.


	8. Aquarius 1st 20413

Aquarius 1st 20413

Early morning.   
I expect a great many noteworthy things will happen today, so here is a quick observation I made this morning I thought you might want to know about. Much like the forest, now that my hive is occupied by two opposing parties who would rather not see that much of each other, there are now certain zones. The upstairs ablution-block, the study I only use to store books I haven’t got the time or reason to read and the spare block which has been converted to the child’s room are now no-go zones for me. The rest of the hive is mine to use at my leisure, which Equestrius will creep through when the need to eat and drink becomes too great to ignore.  
The arrangement is ludicrous, but somehow still enforced. I have no idea when it was decided that we would live semi-separately or who marked out the borders of our respective habitats, but it has been this way from nearly the first day. He uses the ablution-block in question, stays in his block or creeps next door to the study if it has become too stifling in his block. Most of his time he prefers to spend outside of the hive anyway.  
Well, this morning I passed by his block on my way to the study, which I had to invade to retrieve an much-loved volume on poisonous herbs across the old world (miraculously I’ve found that the information remains relevant almost a thousand years after the volume’s publication and the passing of an apocalypse of sorts that should have altered the plant life just the tiniest bit, but no- I swear by this thing). Don’t ask me how the encyclopaedia got up there. I use it so often, but I suppose there is a possibility that Equestrius secreted it up there for a look.  
In the study, I could see the evidence of his presence. There was a dent in the desk, where he must have clanged his head and punched the wood upwards. A couple of books were stacked on the floor, one open in the middle depicting the ancient tyrant of the ancient Alternian civilisation- Her Imperious Conversation or whatever. Who knows how much he can understand? I didn’t even know he could read yet. His counterparts are about as dumb and illiterate as they were the day they punched their way out of their first cocoons and ate their competitors. His schooling will start at the end of the month, at any rate, so until then if it pleases him to stare at pretty pictures of the political tyrants and the great cities of the past, I’ll leave him to it.  
Wow look at how much I’ve written. Jegus, let’s just get to the point, shall we? I have a lot to do today and no time to waste entertaining you with my musings.  
Long story short, the door to his room was open and through it, I was able to see something that relieves me a little bit.   
Normally his door is shut and barricaded with the aid of a chair, but today, for whatever reason, he had left it open when he left the house (you won’t believe who I sent him to today, but that news will have to wait for the update later tonight). So this is the first odd thing. The second is that he has made his bed up. The blankets and sheets which were once bundled up in a nice nest underneath the bed had been clumsily tucked onto the bed. I had to make a couple of corrections, but it made me glad to see that he is no longer treating this whole thing like an extended camping trip.  
No more worrying about him kicking the bed to pieces in the grip of a nightmare and bringing it all down on his head. Come to think of it, I probably should have made sure he had set up his room the right way on his first night. It was kind of a busy day, though, and whether he was going to sleep on his mattress or under did not seem to be the proper kind of thing to question.  
Again, I have to ask: do you think he feels safe in knowing that there is at least the suggestion to catch his brother’s killer? Obviously the true culprit won’t be caught, but this notion seems to have brought him a peace of pan not even his moirail’s tender attentions could supply.  
We’ll see.

Do you remember those pictures they showed us in school?  
Assuming, that is, you ever paid any attention in Ancient History class. Most of the time you and Meulin were exchanging secretive notes or you were strategically avoiding making eye-contact with Rufioh (my, that flush crush started early in the game; did I ever have a chance against you?). I mention A.H. because the state of the forest in general reminds me of those pictures our teacher would put on the holo-board.   
Supposedly, our race is one that cannot forget the sorrow of the generations that came before it. Someone claiming to be wise once said ‘the tears of this generation are the same their ancestors once wept for the Signless’. Gods only know what he was talking about.   
I’m talking about those pictures of crying children in the ruins of their hives, of quadrant mates dying in each other’s’ arms from wounds so heinous they were barely identifiable as Alternians at all- you know the type that were supposed to invoke some kind of instinctive sorrow for the Alternians that lived and died through the apocalypse of our planet.  
That was kind of what the forest was like today. This time, however, I found that I did have some grievances with the sad state of affairs, unlike with the pictures. These were not old images of the suffering of strangers from another time, another world, this was destruction in my own backyard. And what an odd destruction it is.  
Mark me; it’s not as if the entire place has become a wreck of crumbling trees and shivering wildlife, though what has been damaged is far beyond repair. What I am used to seeing in the go zone closest to the hive, Z2, is a glade of tall trees decorated with climbing stalks of red and gold ivy, a thick carpet of spongy ferns that spring back into their former shape as soon as you have removed your weight, flowers by the dozen that flavour stews well and the occasional nutbeast, racing me for the protein-shells that can be obtained by climbing some of the trees.  
Today, there were great swathes of it missing. One of the bushes I have come to rely on for a good supply of bloodberries when my garden is fresh out has been literally melted. It grew at the edge of one of the deep, steaming tracks that have been burned through the forest. One half of it looks like the victim of a blow-torch attack and the other half had begun to wilt from a greyish liquid, not unlike the colour of our own skin, I could see creeping through its veins.  
The tracks themselves are thin, about the width of a slim person such as myself. The problem is their length and their wandering pattern. They wind through the forest in unbroken furrows with no regard for where the go-zone starts and the wild forest stop. Some of the tracks have even broken through the brush fence that rings the go-zones.   
Nothing like this has ever happened. Perhaps it actually has, but that would have been in the no-go zones and no one has set claw in those for at least seventy years, if you count the time that senile wandered into the forest to die.   
We can safely say we have never seen this before, and we can also safely say they have been caused by the beast. I believe we may be looking at its tracks. The beast I saw was like the trees themselves, except much more slender and stunted. I think I can safely say it had the appendages to cause that kind of damage, although I don’t know why it would walk by dragging its legs for hundreds of feet at once. It would make more sense if it walked like a webbeast, lifting legs like prongs for each step. Then again I’m not entirely sure I was looking at tracks at all.   
Wherever the tracks touched was scorched and covered in a thin, oily film of translucent liquid I had the good sense not to touch with my bare skin.  
I prodded a green branch into it and pulled out a blackened branch. The liquid had no smell.  
What disturbs me the most is the position of the tracks. They all run parallel to the town, as if the beast had been pacing around us during the night. A good night’s sleep was already a treat before you and Equestrius, but now? I don’t know how I can even think about going back to sleep if I wake up, knowing I might venture less than two miles from my hive and find evidence that the beast has been watching us at night.   
The Head has asked me to hold my tongue until he and his inner circle cook up a suitable explanation (I bet my horns they say ‘the beast has been angered’) and something else to calm the terrified masses, so keep it to yourself, ok?   
All in all, the damage isn’t as extensive as it could be. People definitely will notice once they are allowed back in, but the losses aren’t too bad. What has been touched directly by the tracks greys and melts. Upon closer inspection, anything close to that is rotting from the inside out. I ended up splitting open a tree with an axe (not your axe, don’t worry, that won’t see the light of day for a while longer) and found the same liquid film over the tracks saturating the flesh of the tree. We’re going to have to cut down all the trees that have been touched, which will be difficult considering the damage they do to the axes.  
Thirteen trees need immediate attention before they pollute the surrounding areas and render Z2 a useless, toxic wasteland. I’m not sure how we’ll manage to get them down, let alone how we’re going to haul the corpses of the trees off without creating tracks of our own  
All told, there are sixty trees spread across the go-zones that need to be disposed of. I noticed a couple more on the outskirts of the no-goes, but that part of the forest will have to be left to its own devices to heal itself, as usual. I only hope that whatever game wanders into the area from those areas won’t bring the diseases back into our lands, assuming we can purge them in the first place. I expect disposing of the dying trees with fire will create another fog like the one that rose off the forest yesterday.   
We’ll have to burn the trees in some part of the forest then, because we can’t pollute the village’s air much more. Since yesterday three wrigglers have been checked into the hospital with a cough that just rattles your bones to hear it. Everyone knows it’s from the inhalation of the smoke, of course, but what we don’t know precisely what the smoke is causing to happen. So far, each wriggler is experiencing a terrible cough. The smallest of them (remember that waif of a wriggler that caused such a stir in the betting circles as people tried to figure out how long it would survive?) has begun to cough so hard it’s brining up pieces of its insides. The boneyard is being prepared for a new tenant as we speak.  
So, to summarise two long days, a whole lot of shit has gone down.  
And I have to wonder, how much of it is your doing, Rus? If you are indeed responsible for anything at all. It just seems too coincidental to me that you die and only two weeks later strange things begin to happen. Nothing like this has ever happened in the thousands years our town has been here. So, how are you doing this? Is it you?  
I have to believe on some level that the strange things happening are at least partially your fault, because the timing is just too perfect to call a coincidence. I know this isn’t happening because the beast is enraged by my transgression. If that were the case, then the forest would have started to smoke five summers ago.  
Are you behind this? Why would you be doing this? How could you do this?  
Revenge upon the home we share? I don’t think so, not with Rufioh and Meu down here. You love them both, not to mention your own little brother. You would never do this to them. You would do something like this to me, but this doesn’t affect me specifically. I suppose the blistering thing on my finger might turn out to be a fatal poison, which would suck and end up making Equestrius homeless again.  
You’ll have to excuse me. Today has been confusing. Although the smoke has dissipated, I fear I my pan might have been addled by some vestiges of it.

Damara


	9. Aquarius 2nd 20413

Aquarius 2nd 20413

Life in a small town has never been easy.  
Especially when the town is made small by the immense oceans of trees surrounding it on all sides and the lives within the town are governed by a series of strict rules which must be obeyed to ensure the continuation of the town and the various and limited sources of nourishment we survive on.  
We are packed in here, shoulder-to-shoulder with our neighbours. Anyone who wishes to poke their nose into your business has only to turn their head to do so.   
The hive is isolated, compared to the others. Our nearest neighbour out here is Kankri and his loathsome descendant, just under half a mile away. It entirely escaped my mind to mention in my last letter that the aforementioned blabbing buffoon is the one I entrusted Equestrius with while I investigated the damage in the forest. While it may have slipped my mind, it has certainly made a stir in the gossip circles.  
As you know I am renowned for my anti-social tendencies and my willingness to take the business end of a broom to whomsoever attempts to change the situation. So of course, my calling on Kankri was viewed as some kind of out-of-the-blue solicitation into a quadrant. Either red, they’re saying, or a confused black. I have had a hearty laugh at the glances and the hushed whispers thrown my way. In reality, it was just me saying “Hold this for a second”, not the far-fetched red romance people have imagined for us.  
Just thought I’d let you know.  
No, that’s not right- I’m creating suspense.  
Something has happened today. I’m sure you know it. I’m sure you can tell. I’m sure you’re dying for the big reveal.  
Perhaps first, you will hold your hoof-beasts and let me set the scene, otherwise the news I am about to share will not make much sense.  
Right now, Equestrius is sacked out on the couch. I know, I know, it’s amazing to think he’s allowing himself to sleep in the same room as me yet again. In fact, it is kind of cruel that I take this moment to pen another of my letters to his dead brother as he dozes fewer than ten feet away. Oh well.  
The excitement of the day has certainly tuckered him out.  
I may not be his most avid supporter, but I will say one thing for the village head and his circle of cronies: they sure can pull together on a political issue when there is a big, screaming demand for it in the village. Part of the reason he has reacted so quickly to the outrage over your murder may be because he wants to distract the village’s attention from the fogs on the forest. Lucky for him he had a convenient scapegoat, the one who was actually nominated to die this year. The ‘investigation’ turned out to be nothing more than a public announcement of their reasoning; you were too valuable to the town to be killed by anyone who didn’t have a serious grudge, and since no one had a serious grudge against you then logically the only reason you were killed was to spare the troll who was due to die anyway.  
For this next part, I believe the authorities had to improvise. As it turns out, while I was working in the forest and Kankri was boring the children with a lecture vaguely related to either fishing or generic work-place safety and the rest of the village were brainlessly going about their business, the village head arranged it for Snyder Cynick to be taken from his hive while none of us were looking. Here, murder is about as common as the fog, which is to say if it’s happened since the founding of this village up to this point then we have no record of it. Excepting the ritualised murder at the Altar of course.  
The way to deal with a murder is written in the laws. Not that any of us have the time nor the interest necessary to read the law books, so the sanction was news to all of us, including Snyder. The village head called a meeting this morning. At first, I thought it might be to announce the death of that waif wriggler we all knew was going to die (it was buried during the night by its dancestor and by the early morning everyone had somehow found out and were offering their condolences and a few collecting the profits of their bets), but at the same time I couldn’t escape the feeling that it might be something more serious, something we didn’t actually know already, because the announcement over the seldom-used PA systems was quite clear in its wish that every single sentient organism in the town should come to see what there was to be seen. Furthermore, they wanted us to gather at the Altar instead of the usual town square.  
It took a short mental debate on my part to decide Equestrius needed to be conscious for what we were going to see. Briefly, I considered sedating him and carrying him there, pretending the little tyke had had a bad night as was sleeping it off- I hear from Peixies that the concoction we use to help a child’s cough also knocks them completely out, and one of her guiltiest moments as a dancestor was the time she gave her brat (Feferpee or something like that) a dose of the meds when she was in the middle of a tumultuous strop. For some reason, people keep talking to me about their progeny. I don’t know at this point if there is a way I can convince them I am not interested.  
I informed the kid that we would be going to the Altar and spent the next ten minutes coaxing him out of the house. The only thing that really convinced him to leave was telling him that Rufioh was going to be there, at which he brightened. It should make you glad to hear Rufioh is making a genuine effort to see him, but they still don’t get to spend much time together.  
When I finally got him out of the house, I found Kankri and Kankri Jr waiting for us at the fence. This was so utterly terrifying I very nearly ran back into the house, but I couldn’t grab Equestrius fast enough and before I knew it he and the Sweater-baby were chatting in front of us and Kankri was droning on about something I can’t even being to identify.  
I have been told he has an impressive and extensive vocabulary. I wouldn’t know. When he talks, all I can hear is ‘blah’ repeated on an endless loop.  
I suppose you want to know what happened at the Altar, but considering that it’s through your own fault that I had to attend and anyone with half a brain and a passing understanding of the way we work here could figure it out in ten seconds flat, I’m going to digress.  
What does Kankri imagine himself to be doing by engaging with me? Does he think he’s going to rescue me from some undesirable social situation? There is nothing about my current situation I wish to change excepting the interference from others. My reason for only talking to you back in the day was because you were the only person I could really put up with.   
Sure you can be just as offensive, obnoxious and altogether unbearable as the rest of them, given the chance and the right circumstances, but for the most part? You were just the right mix of subtly bitter and awkwardly, unintentionally charming that made me feel like I had to stick to you, otherwise someone would sweep you up in a sack and toss you in a river, drowning you like a kitten when we weren’t looking. Don’t even ask me where this sentiment came from, but I have yet to really get that vibe from another person.   
Now that that digression is out of the way, we will return to the scene. The town is emptying and the seldom-trod streets that lead to the Altar are filling up. People walk in tight knots that are dispersed along the road, sharing gossip among themselves. A couple of suspicious glances are cast our way. I suspect if it weren’t for the solemnity of the mysterious summons, these glances would be followed by outbursts of poorly stifled giggles.  
Kankri talks to me, but I don’t hear him.   
Much like the holoboard in the lessons of my childhood, the image of Equestrius and the kids’ backs swim in and out of focus as my boredom wanes and grows fierce, then wanes again. I find myself staring at ferns at the roadside with interest, and not out of my history in botany. I am thinking ‘pretty colours’. A part of me wonders if Kankri might be a murderer too, only with a much slower method that involves methodically killing parts of the pan with the dullest subjects trollish-ly possible until the listener is reduced to a drooling scrap of meat, withered by the weathering of countless monologues.  
More and more, I wish that one of the seniles being carefully lead up ahead of us would drop down dead in the middle of the path, to give us something else to do or talk about. In the confusion, assuming I can grab Equestrius and tuck him under my arm then run away at a sufficient speed, I might even been able to get away before Kankri notices I have left his side.  
Far-fetched, I know.  
By the time we are drawing near to the Altar, the burst of courage that got Equestrius out of the hive has worn off and driven him to my side. He hovers beside me, perhaps unsure if our relationship has gotten to the place where he can safely cling to my leg as his contemporary is doing (and yet Kankri walks with unbroken grace and blithers all the more for it), or perhaps he is merely concerned he might tug my breeches off accidentally. Either way, the results would be excruciatingly uncomfortable for the both of us.  
It is almost enough to melt the thick ice around my pusher, except that the moment Rufioh approaches he scurries over and wraps his little arms around Rufioh’s leg. Apparently, his strength was not his concern, because he manages to do so without snapping one of Rufioh’s stick-legs like a…like a stick.  
In fact, Rufioh goes as far to scoop the little shit up and balance him on his hip like you are still around, that Rufioh is just holding Equestrius for you until you get back.  
Noticing the absence of his own wriggler, I ask him if he has finally summoned the balls and good sense to abandon the crippled thing at the edge of the forest. He tells me in no uncertain terms (covering Equestrius’s ears) in what orifice I should stick my horns, enraging Kankri’s trigger-senses so that Karkat has to be detached so that the full brunt of his lecture can be communicated without the handicap of a small child wanting to know what the fuck a ‘horn enema’ is.  
The village head stands close to the Altar so that he is on the crest of the hill and can observe his subjects as he frantically invents his excuses. I am happy to stare at him and undress him in my mind, shuddering at the pale folds of grey flab I find underneath the tunic that barely disguises them.  
As I stare, I notice I am slowly but surely being surrounded by the other ten. I seem to have missed some kind of fashion-related memo, because every single one of them has a child hanging off them in some way.  
‘Pora has his hanging onto him by the back of his tunic, scaling him. Meu has hers slung over her shoulder. Rufioh’s is on Loz’s back, while Loz’s own descendant (an eternal presence in my nightmares) holds his free hand obediently, not showing more than a passing interest in any component of his surroundings apart from Kankri’s wriggler, who swiftly attaches himself to Loz’s wriggler. Latula has actually brought Mituna along with her, or rather that clumsy thing that infiltrated Mituna’s body after the accident. Remarkably, he remains silent, even when Peixies starts to needle him. A very, very large part of me hopes that he loses his tenuous grasp of control and blasts her into next week with a bolt of psionics.  
So. We are all here.  
We had a couple of moments to wait. You know what the others are like, so there is no need for me to transcribe the veritable pages of inane dialogue that washed over my head while I pictured what middle-aged troll nipples would look like on the village head, but at one point Kankri did find a way to dominate the conversations and we all began to fall asleep on our feet.  
I will tell you that Rufioh’s brat- good Gog there are simply too many of them, I need to learn their names so I at least know who to curse. It’s either Mavros or Tavros, but I will tell you that he didn’t seem jealous to have his dancestor’s affections being squandered on another child, even though the legal owner of that child was standing less than ten feet away. In fact, it made me wonder what M/Tavros thinks about Equestrius? More and more I am wishing I had paid attention to the lives going on around me so I would at least know where people stand in relation to your boy. Trying to figure this out is like stumbling through the forest blindfolded.  
Leave me some comprehensive notes and a full character bio the next time, will you?  
Onto the speech, anyway.  
The village head waited for his various figures of authority to surround him before he felt secure in calling our attention to him and explaining what was going to happen.  
Oh you’re going to get a kick out of this.  
The head described the recent shenanigans, as if the entire population of the village had been on a brief vacation and missed the whole thing, explaining how it could only be down to the outrage of the beast. Again, I was tempted to ask him if that was his reasoning then why did Ida’s death go without so much as a peep when she was unlawfully killed? However, I could also think of no better way to incriminate myself, so I kept my mouth shut.   
The rest of the crowd wore varying degrees of incredulity ‘pon their reaction slates, some of them drinking it up, others whispering doubts amongst themselves (particularly Kankri, whose inside voice is about as subtle and embarrassing as a fart in a silent room) and others still swaying on their feet with looks of blissful stupidity. Guess which of those three types the majority of the crowd belonged to?  
If you guessed drooling idiots, then you haven’t quite forgotten us all yet.  
So the drooling idiot giving the address bumbled through a couple more lines he was clearly reading off his hand about how we must submit to the beast, how through only its benevolence and generosity have we been allowed the lands from which we forage and harvest. Talk of the beast, especially from the mouth of an appointed official, always adds a sort of sinister quality to the air even the freshest wrigglers sense. I could hear them coughing again, but not so violently as the one who died this morning. Even they seemed to be making an effort to mute their coughs, and their dancestors’ shooshes were subdued.  
Miraculously, even our group’s batch of rambunctious puffles quieted down and glued themselves to their dancestors out of fear rather than a desire to annoy. I was glad to catch Equestrius giving me an uncertain look every now and again, to which I responded with a flat look like ‘I don’t know what he’s going about either’.  
But I sort of did. He was giving himself away. As you know, the head is a terrible liar. Even as he is delivering some kind of truth, he gives the impression of a school-child bursting with excitement about some kind of quad-drama.  
It didn’t take a genius to figure out we were about to drive Snyder Cynick into the woods, and yet the collective gasp that was taken in by the crowd when he was plucked from behind the Altar and made to stand on it thinned the air. At first there was a faint horror. Then a slightly louder rumble of approval. And before I knew it, mob psychology had worked its magic and over half the crowd were shouting their grievances at him. I’m not sure how many of them remembered what kind of crime he was guilty for until the village head reiterated your murder, explaining the paper-thin logic by which they had found evidence to convict him.  
I will record a couple of the reactions of our group.   
Pexies: That old loon takin’ down Rus? Please, next they gone be tellin’ us the smoke was jus’ the forest fartin’   
Kankri: I find it hard to believe that this purported murder is in reality anything more than a convenient excuse to move the village’s minds past the recent and tragic loss of our blah blah blah…  
Meulin: This is unbelievably stupid. It wasn’t him.  
Loz: *nodding as if to music, probably thinks he is still asleep*  
Mituna: Horuss is dead?  
Their intellects remain towering and unchallenged as usual.  
Rufioh was tight-lipped and silent, as was Equestrius. Neither of them was kicking up their heels with joy. I don’t know what I expected from them, actually, apart from an emotional reaction of some kind. Not so much as a sniffle from Equestrius.  
Despite the certainty of the contradictions to the village head’s death sentence that Meu and Kankri muttered under their breath, they didn’t say a word as Snyder Cynick was jeered at and even pelted with a couple of pebbles, but that stopped as quickly as it started. The children were plainly terrified and excited to be caught up in this uncharacteristic display of ferocity, energy even (!), from their normally carrot-beast-like neighbours. For a moment, I was afraid Latula’s kid, with her near fetish of a passion for all things right and wrong, was going to wet herself.  
The village head had a few more things to say, but I get the feeling he cut some of it out, seeing the hostility of the crowd. I suppose you’ll be proud of us to know that none of us uttered so much as a word as Snyder Cynick was driven into the forest. They put spears to his back and nudged him forward, as close to the treeline as they dared.  
There was a single quiet moment as he turned to face us, his back to the trees. We held our breath, half expecting something (a prong of wood-like material, that’s what I knew to expect) to shoot through his middle and tug him into the forest. Nothing of the sort happened. It was merely Cynick staring at us with tears in his gander globes.  
Our first great betrayal was offering him up to the beast; we, who had been raised with and attempted to educate him, fed and clothed him, lived with him our entire lives and tolerated him, although as it is with most of those who are destined to be offerings, we knew exactly that: he was destined to end up on the Altar.  
Our second great betrayal was refusing to forgive him of the murder and giving him up a second time.   
His eyes swept through the crowd. Had this been a fantasy piece of some kind, he would have locked eyes with me and a shiver of understanding would pass between us. Smelling the blood, he would think about calling me out, demanding that I confess the full extent of my brutal sins. I would think about how the very pins I wore in my hair that day were the instruments that initially punctured your lungs and other organs, followed by an axe as I realised people would probably suspect me for the size and shape of the punctures if there ever as a chance to get a look at your body.  
He would turn away, broken and defeated, and we would perhaps hear a single scream later during the day.  
But that’s not what happened.  
His last act as a member of this village was to spit at the village head, present us all with an extremely rude gesture that offended Kankri about as much as the death sentence and he turned on his heel and stomped off into the forest. We heard his footsteps fade for about half a minute. For another half a minute, we waited for that delicious scream.  
Then Meu Jr complained she needed the load gaper.  
So that was the permission the crowd needed to disperse. I love how they listened to a little kid asking for the gaper-room when the village head clearly intended to follow up on his speech. He tried, but it was too late. We were gone.  
Meu didn’t hang around to talk to any of us. She snatched up her kid and was off. I watched her go, waiting to feel remorse or something or the kind. When I did not, I admired the excellent view of her ass. She didn’t stick around to receive her condolences, but Rufioh got a few pats on the back and shoulders from the rest of the village. They seemed quite touched to find him hold the younger, forgotten Zahhak. A couple of them tried to talk to Equestrius, but he planted his face firmly in Rufioh’s neck and refused to speak. Going by the expressions, people found this heart-breaking and adorable at the same time.  
Eventually, I tugged Rufioh away by the elbow. You should have seen their faces –‘oh right! Damara is taking care of him now! My gods, look at her, no cleavage!’  
“I want to take him for the night.” he said.  
I noticed the way he cleverly worked in a request for my permission “What for?”  
His glare was acid “What do you mean what for? So he doesn’t have to spend this night alone in a strange hive!”  
“Alone?” I repeated innocently “Do you think I dissolve into thin air when you’re not around to make sure he gets his full measure of dotage?”  
Aranea, M/Tavros and Aranea’s evil little bitch of a wriggler (a troll after my own pusher) waited for us to solve our dispute.  
To his credit, Rufioh was patient, and he didn’t let his apparent anger at me make him say things that could shake Equestrius up “It’s just…he knows us. He has a bed there. He has someone his own age at my hive.”  
I couldn’t resist a glance at M/Tavros, who was eyeing Equestrius in the same way the woof-beasts eye a ball they think someone will throw for them.  
“Well…if you think it’s best for him (his face brightened), then I suppose it can’t do more harm than good. However I would like to come with him (his face fell straight into the depths of the underworld; if something squishy and lightly freckled, slightly resembling a troll face fell on you a great height at some point, it was his face). You’re forgetting he is my responsibility. You can come and go as you wish, but I’m ultimately the one who feeds and clothes him.”  
The look he gave me was a strange combination of hurt, pissed and tired “’Come and go’? I know we’re not on the best terms, but Damara…you can’t…you can’t just say that. He’s a part of my life too.” he covered Equestrius’s ear again, but I doubt the kid was listening to us anyway “He’s not something I pick up and play with whenever I feel like it. He’s my kid.”  
I considered saying ‘mine too’, but I feel I would have lost some ground there “And he is my responsibility. Besides, you’ll have to come back to the hive to get his night-clothes.”  
“He has clothes at my place.”  
“Well I don’t, unless you’ve been an extremely creepy ex and hung onto some of them.”  
At this point he gave up. His hand must have begun to get sore, holding Equestrius’s innocent ears closed so he didn’t have to hear the adults quibble, either that or the mention of the corpse of what was once a fair attempt at a matespritship shamed him into silence. Aranea was looking at us in the most perfect expression or horror, as if she thought I was moving in on him. Trust me, Rus, I may be slutty scum in almost all senses of the term, but I do have a code in place.  
Rufioh is not on my bucket list.  
So this explains how I ended up sleeping in the spare room of the Nitram hive tonight. The kid shares a room with M/Tavros down the hall and Rufioh’s room, rather awkwardly, is right next to mine. It’s not that I can hear every noise that he makes. In fact I don’t think I even need to describe or explain how it feels to have my ex snoozing right next door to me.  
Well moving on, I will tell you that Equestrius seemed to brighten up when they got him over the threshold. Here, they both insist on employing that ridiculous nickname that the rest of the village uses: Equius. Such a childish nickname I wouldn’t even wish it on an actual child. Still, he responds to it about as enthusiastically as I’ve ever seen him answer to his own name (he looks them in the eyes to talk to them, for a start), so as much as it pains me to admit this, but Rufioh was right.  
It is good for him to be over here. He fell asleep much more quickly than he ever does at my hive. In fact, he probably would have spent the entire night sleepless if I had dragged him back home. Rufioh was right, for the second time in his life.  
The first time being the time he told me we would both be happier with the new arrangement, wherein I was cast off to the side to be the sour, nasty person I really was deep down and where he would get to be revoltingly devoted to the village’s cutest mechanic.  
That’s enough about that, now.  
It’s time for me to sleep: big day, another one waiting to tire me out at the other end of the night. Justice has been served, apparently.  
All is well.  
Good night.  
<3   
Damara


	10. Aquarius 4th 20413

It’s right outside.  
If you are doing this, you had better stop this fucking instant.  
I will not stand for this. It’s not the way you act. It’s not the way to act. This is horrible and bullying and putting your brother at risk and you need to stop right now.  
Take it back. Put it back where it belongs, or they’ll find out.

 

 

 

Aquarius 4th 20413

You were not a cruel person.  
Not a glittering ray of sunshine either, but if one were to dig to the core of you, they would find a soft, sweet and squishy centre, not of the muscle or meat one would expect to find in a troll, but a sweet jelly-ish centre like those tarts dancestors with the skills to bake will make for their descendants to shut them up on rainy days. Anyone who spent a little bit of time with you could tell that under that shell of shyness and the various, thick layers of muscle, you were all sugary-nougaty and the cruel streak that would sometimes make an appearance was pathetically small.  
At least, I was of that general opinion until a few hours ago.  
They say there’s the potential for immense cruelty within any troll and that it only waits for the right circumstances to emerge. Whoever they are, I believe them. Granted I am not the same little troll who knotted her fists in her skirts when she grew nervous and blushed at a compliment (as oppose to asking why the speaker thinks it’s their responsibility to inform me when they find me physically attractive), but I never thought I would have it in me to kill someone.   
Similarly, I never thought you would have it in you to come back to haunt me.  
So, shall we re-cap the night? Rufioh and Tavros (it is Tavros: I even wrote it on my hand so I would know what to record when the time for the next letter came) had left about two hours before the fog rolled in. This is not one of those piddly, silly fogs that make the seniles afraid for the days of the smogs that made trolls bleed from their eyes which rolled in off the forests kind of like the smokes, but the smokes have yet to melt sinuses and pan-vessels yet. This was one of those fogs that comes all the way up to the windows and tries to sneak in through the cracks. I haven’t seen one since the lusii died.  
Now that you’ve been out and about in one of these fogs with whoever the hell that was you had with you, I wonder if you know why the lusii are all dead? The old nag is buried in the basement, where I left her, and I actually went down to check on this after you were gone. Should it concern you at all at this point, your little brother is fine too. Equestrius slept through the ordeal, even when I was picking him up and hiding him.  
When the fog came up to the house, my concern was more towards the fact that it might be that burning smoke again. I foresaw dry coughs keeping me and the kid up all knight and set about shutting the blinds and plugging up a couple of the holes where the drafts like to sneak in. Perhaps it is because most of the blinds were shut that I didn’t notice the faces in the windows at first. I did eventually notice- something like that pierces even the deepest stupor of sleepiness. I assumed either someone was trying to get in to assault us or had forgotten that it is considered polite in our society to knock at the front door of the hive, as opposed to hanging around a window until somebody happens by and lets you in.  
Rapping on the window, I let him know I wasn’t going to be an easy victim, or that he should go around to the front door- he could interpret it to his intentions. Imagine my unease when I found two more faces in the next window.  
These, I did not recognise as well. I’m guessing they died well before my time so I didn’t have the chance to meet them. Well, in all honesty, going around the village and introducing myself to everyone that lives there isn’t exactly one of my top priorities. We all know each other by face and role here. I doubt half the village knew you as anything but ‘that guy with the great hair and mechanical skills that keep me from freezing my fruity rumpus off in the winter’ until you took it upon yourself to die dramatically and become a scandal.  
It only occurred to me that these people clamouring around my house were probably, almost certainly dead people when I recognised our school-teacher. The very same who used to teach those sugary Ancient History lessons that were supposed to dance on our pusher-strings. There was no trace of that aggressive fungal infection that turned his face the blue of a clot of your blood and had lichen growing in his beard by the end of it. He looked unharmed, except for the fact that he was very clearly dead.  
This is the point at which I dashed upstairs and fought my way into Equestrius’s room. He still leaves the chair propped up against the door, so I had to fetch the screwdriver and remove the whole damned thing to get him out. The point of putting the chair there is so he can hear me should I start to come in, yes? He sleeps like a stone. I don’t think he would have woken up if I carried him downstairs by the ankles, rather than cradled him carefully. Yes, that’s right, I cradled him. Look at me. All dancestor-ly all at once.  
By the time I had him in my arms, the voices had risen above a whisper. I couldn’t tell you when the voices started in, but you probably know anyway, since you must have been there from the start. You were, right?  
By that time they were also pawing at the glass with their ghostly hands. Greyer than the palest grey I have ever seen- practically the colour of a lusus, although it would have to be a dead lusus. They did not seem to know my name. They were saying many things, none of which I can be certain I truly heard. Perhaps my pan caught a bunch of shade-like gibberish and tried to interpret it into something I would understand, knowing the staples of the horror genre from the amount of time I spent huddled around a campfire listening to an elder bullshitting a moral into some slash-and-stalk as a younger troll.  
For a moment, I was truly ready to believe in the gods and in the divine vengeance they supposedly enforce. It embarrasses me to think of how quickly I would have gotten on my knees in fervent prayer to the sweet Lady Death if I hadn’t had a child dozing in my arms. I took us into the basement, lamenting the amount of glass and semi-clear surfaces the wraiths had at their disposal so they could stare at us, pretty much tracking our progress all the way through the hive. Picture that: a troll dressed in an open kimono (found it just in time to be haunted, as if fate demanded I dress up for the occasion), her hair loose about her horns and her blanched face with a child clasped to her chest, dreaming as peacefully as if he were still in his own hive with his own brother transporting him to a soft bed, rather than a cold basement’s dirt floor where he would unwittingly spend the rest of the night cramped into his new guardian’s lap.  
Even in my silent fear, I decided it would behove me to get a look at the faces in the glass, just in case there was some kind of correlation apart from them all being dead and ghosts. This is why I was in the hall when the door swung open.  
And I saw you.  
You’re still pretty. Hot as hell, in fact. Does my pusher good to know that even dead men can make you’re pan spin and your tongue fuzzy so nothing comes out of your squawk blaster but a faint squeak of thanks to whoever pushed this hot little number in your general vicinity. Of course, the squeak was not of thanks, but of fear, owing to that expression on your face. Man you looked pissed. Beyond pissed.  
Raving far beyond pissed. I was surprise you didn’t dart forward, grab me by the hair and swing me over your horns. Actually, I was more relieved than surprised.  
I’ll apologise for my lack of communication now. The kind of shock of having your former best friend (even though he doesn’t know it) turned murder victim stride through the door with a press of ghosts behind him peering in at you is not one that leaves you in full control of your senses, let alone the power of speech. You’ll forgive my blank stare, I’m sure.  
I’m less certain you will forgive me for backing silently down the stairs and closing the basement door with a resounding WHAM, then blocking up the passage with a stack of crates of mysterious content.  
Well fuck you then, because you scared the living shit out of me. My scared quota has been filled for the next fifteen sweeps, especially after what you did next.  
Those footsteps shook the hive right down to its foundations. Somehow the village is not in an uproar today, trying to figure out what the fuck it was that crashed through town and left the perfectly circular scorch marks in Damara’s lawn and shook the hives so hard it seemed the ceiling would fall in. No, they slept right on through it, and so did Equestrius.  
In hindsight I should have woken him, if only to have him confirm for me that this was not a dream later on.  
I sat on top of the grave of my lusus and waited for the noise to pass, holding him tightly. The single lightbulb hung naked from the ceiling and danced around crazily with each footstep. I believe they were about six or seven seconds apart each, so there must be a whole lot of body mass for it to move around. It’s taller than the tallest tree in the forest when it stands up straight, after all.  
Eventually, the fear began to lose some of its paralysing effects. You know I am not the kind of person to cower in the weak light, waiting for the nasties to go away.  
Again, you’ll have to forgive me for taking Equestrius back out into whatever it is you brought down on my hive, his hive, but I had to see the beast for myself. Crossing the basement to the small window that is mounted at the very top of the wall, level with the ground, I climbed up and peered out, first checking that there were no ghostly shapes lurking. It was difficult to tell with that damn fog laying on everything like a blanket, but their voices were loud, and distant at that point, so I guessed we would be safe as long as we ducked back inside and locked up if I saw one coming.  
What gentle-trolls you and your friends were, to not make the basement door spring open the way the front door was opened, just to make me feel safe.  
Before you get mad about me slipping out the window with a defenceless child on my back, let me just say that I had absolutely no inkling of what you wanted, still don’t, so leaving Equestrius while I might have an opening to escape was the dumbest possible outcome I could conceive. On the bright side, I had the foresight to bind our noses and mouths with my obi, stuffed up one of my sleeves, which I tore in half.  
Out we went.  
Even the ground was lost in the swirling volumes of mist that surrounded us. I could barely see past my own knee, let alone where I was going. I was sure that at any moment one of the dead folk would loom out of the fog and make a grab for my still-beating pusher, then finally wake Equestrius so he could watch its last spasms. Shirking the wall of the hive, I watched the fogs, waiting for a stirring, a movement to signify it was near.  
And it was, all at once.  
Its leg was thick and thin at the same time. The shape was like a dried flower pressed between two pages: I saw every vein, withered and drying, and tissue so thin I feel I could have poked a hole in it with my fingernail, but the limb itself was very thick, about as thick as the column of a porch. My arms would have just about met in the middle had I chosen to waltz over and hug the leg.  
The beast’s head soon followed. It must have been crouching or bent double, because I never saw anything but that leg that about ten feet away from us and the beast’s face.  
I don’t think I need to describe the face to you, since you were around. You know what those eyes are like.  
You died in the glare of those eyes, after all.  
It stared at me for a little while. Contemplating me like one might contemplate an ant underneath the piece of glass they are about to use to burn it. The fumes coming off of that thing smelled like death and worse. Breathing them in probably shaved sweeps off my life and will make Equestrius grow up stunted. If that is indeed what happens, that will be the worst injury we walk away from that encounter with.  
The beast looked me over then it was gone. The leg retracted into the fog and the voices became a roar, so I slipped back into the window and shut it just as the first of them drew into view. I spent the night in a corner, one arm around Equestrius and the free hand over my ear.  
They melted when the day came, leaving with the shadows.  
Equestrius woke up in his bed. I wanted to behave as if nothing transpired last night, so that is what I will do. Root for me. Pray for my strength- although I suppose, giving your condition, it might be easier to walk over to the gods and ask nicely.  
Kankri’s at the door.

xx


	11. Aries 3rd 20413

Aries 3rd 20413

Two pieces of news.  
Both of them are ‘finally’s and ‘first’s. Which one would you like to hear first?  
Perhaps you would rather I stall the delivery of my obviously killer news by launching into a long-winded explanation of why I haven’t written to you in so long, including detailed descriptions of Equius’s blossoming (or rather, his inching out of his shell) and of how I have been maturing as a dancestor and a person all-round?  
HA! I say to that.  
No, fuck you and fuck your petty need for tension. There will be no crescendo today, so pout all you like, but I’m just going to say it plain and simple.  
First pap.   
Not a chaste pap either. Surprisingly raunchy, actually, and very intimate. The overall quality was improved by the fact that it was Kankri Vantas who papped me, without an invitation or a word of warning on his part. In fact, it was kind of a forceful pap, you know? One of those paps that leaves no room for argument, insisting that the recipient’s mood improve post-haste lest the papper be forced to pick them up and throw them into a pile for the palest feelings jam that was ever jammed.  
Whew.   
Goodness, look at me, fanning myself like a school-girl just reliving the moment. And yes, it really was Kankri. I’m not pulling your leg nor any other body part for that matter. He had a good reason to pap me as well. The two of us were slaving away in the kitchen while Karkat and Equius and Nepeta (whom I have come to think of as Eq’s mewling shadow) played in the backyard, and out of nowhere, tears came sliding down my cheeks in great deluges. I’m not sure if Kankri was more shocked or if I was.  
The crying is the second piece of news, by the way. I didn’t think I would ever cry for you, but I have once again defied my own limited expectations of myself. Never had I imagined I would one day be a dancestor, a proper one with the school-run and the lunch made the night before and the bed-time stories and all that soul-sucking shit. Never had I believed for a moment that I was going to succeed in convincing Equius I was not going to sneak into his room and eat him during the night, but he has removed the chair and I no longer need the aid of a screwdriver to get into his room to do a clean-up.  
Never ever ever in my wildest dreams did I think I would be having a pale romp on Kankri’s kitchen floor while our children shrieked outside, but there you have it.  
Damara Megido is going new places. Doing new people too.  
Gods, I can’t even remember the last sexual encounter I even had. I’m pretty sure it was that quickie in the hay with the farmer’s luscious descendant last summer, and since then my only pleasure has been a quick glance up a tunic in a strong wind and whatever images I am able to conjure up by mentally undressing my peers.  
The first pap was so surprising I very nearly shut up. Of course, then the image of you all broken and dead and axed in the chest sprang into my mind, the tears came back and all I could do was plant my face into the shoulder Kankri offered and weep until my eyes went dry and my jaw ached from being papped so much.  
“I’m surprised you have gone this long without weeping,” he had to speak up to make himself heard over me “The amount of stress you have been under is amazing, but you certainly have soldiered on in the most admirable manner, Damara, it has truly been a wonder and a pleasure to observe. I was certain you saw Equius as more of a meal than a child during those first weeks, but he seems so much more at ease in your company,” and so on and so forth.  
I managed to put in a few fragments of a sentence now and then, stuff like “Fucking hell” and “Rus is dead”. Moving, poetic pieces of prose, I am sure.  
Bless his loquacious little pusher, Kankri was a saint. He held me while I pulled myself together, although he didn’t have much of a lap to fit me in. The moment truly could have gone somewhere once I had the breath back in my lungs and was searching for something to say that could accurately sum up the equal measures of ‘fucking get off me’ and ‘thank you’ I felt for him at those moments, but wouldn’t you know it, a kid walked in.  
In comes Karkat, tracking mud I had only just gotten up off the floor, and he lets out the most hair-raising cry for a moment I think he has been stabbed from behind by an invisible assailant.  
He ran back to the yard screaming “EQ EQ EQ MY DANNIE’S PAPPING YOUR DANNIE IT’S SO GROSS!”  
Now, Kankri’s hive is not as conveniently isolated as mine is.   
He has a neighbourhood to hear what is screamed from his backyard, so of course I got all kinds of eyebrow-waggles and appraising looks on the way home as I attempted clumsily to explain to Equius how it was alright for two, consenting adults to be ‘friendly’ in the way, that Kankri was only being ‘friendly’, showing off his serious infection of that disease that seems to plague all of our peers. Ultimately, I confused myself more and only gave him more questions to ask, the foremost of which was “So are you and Kankri moirails now?”  
How do I answer that? I’ve been trying to instil the art of subtlety into him when it comes to subjects such as this – normally, he is a master of the subtle, the way he glues himself to the furthest wall and watches and watches until all of his friends are turning around with burnt backs from his eyes, asking each other in whispers what the hell he is doing back there and if he is asleep or awake. It takes a true, natural talent to gather information in such a sneaky manner, but unfortunately, Eq has adopted Nepeta’s brash method of gleaning information pertaining to the quadrants. He just asks outright, not realising how amazingly crass it can be.  
You know me.  
I love crass. For a while, I carried a staff around with me for the specific purpose of getting a peek in up the tunics of the fools who went boldly by me when they didn’t have breeches on underneath. I never did approve of children learning about these sorts of things before it was necessary for them too and in my pan, going on six summers is far too young to know anything other than the fact that quadrants exist.  
Six summers old is definitely too young to be asking your dancestor in the middle of a public street if they are now moirails with someone they supposedly despise platonically.  
“Um.” was my answer.  
“Does that mean we have to spend nights at their house?” he frowned, looking almost like an adult in his concentration “I’d rather stay with Tavros and Rufioh…Karkat sprawls when he sleeps.” he mimed the action carefully, indicating Karkat often threw one of his bony arms across Eq’s nose and suffocated him slowly.  
“What business would I have staying at Kankri’s house overnight?”  
His frown deepened “You’re the one who’s supposed to tell me that kind of stuff.”  
Had I a mouthful of water at that point, Eq would have gotten his bath early.  
“You’re staying with Rufioh,” I assured him, shooting the most venomous glares I could muster at everyone who looked at us “And when you stay with Rufioh-”  
“You’ll stay with Kankri?” he suggested this so innocently I could almost see the halo caught between his horns.  
I replied through gritted fangs “No, I will stay up late finishing the work I can’t do with you bumbling around the house. I will stay hunched over my desk and eat dishes so unhealthy if you even look at them at this age, your gander globes will fall out and your fangs will crust over with sugar. I will curse the weeds in the garden with a vocabulary that means a snack of soap if I catch you saying them before you’re at least thirteen summers old, and wish I had my strong assistant to help, then I’ll give up, go inside and watch a shitty movie. Understood?”  
He mulled this over “Is Kankri watching the movie with you?”  
I made one final attempt to dissuade him: “Kankri is not my moirail, nor will he ever be my moirail and nor will I ever feel anything of a pale persuasion towards him. My feelings are utterly platonic and I shall remain an old maid until I am dead.”  
“So will you become his pale quadrant when you’re dead?”  
I just can’t win with you fucking Zahhaks.

Well, where to start?  
You might have noticed the two-cycle pause, or you might not have. That started out as a strop that blossomed into starvation for the spare time to do it, and also the privacy I need, once Eq started school. Now that he’s in school and I’ve managed to plunk myself squarely on the dancestor roster, I’m stuck picking up him and Tavros and Nepeta from school two afternoons out of every week and herding or wheeling them back to their respective hives, sometimes leaving Eq at one if I’m lucky. Before that, I’m up to my arms in apothecary and occasionally have to deal with a visit from the village leader himself, who seems to have elected me as the unofficial expert of whatever the fuck it is the forest is trying to do to us.  
Work takes up a fuck ton of time and once you’ve factored in feeding Eq, checking that he has bathed and done his homework (honestly, what kind of corrupted system gives homework to wrigglers?), I barely have the time to plant my ass in a chair and breathe deeply, let alone find a secluded spot and pen one of these letters.  
Still, practice makes perfect or at the very least makes it so that you can get by without expiring from stress, so I have already found something of a balance. I carved out a ten minute slot in between getting home from work and getting changed out of my apothecary outfit to get the kids to start the letter, then another one after Eq gets back to the hive and is upstairs changing and another one after dinner has been finished and Eq is slinking away from doing his share of the dishes (for a good reason- he breaks most ceramics that he touches, so I took the liberty of salvaging a metal cup for him from your hive) and finally a good twenty minute chunk when Eq has been tucked into his bed and had his nightly ration of sopor painted on his forehead.  
You know, there’s one good thing about living with another troll. He tells me when I’m about to walk out the door with my sopor streak painted across my forehead, which I’m sure you remember I did all the time. He also reminds me to eat, points out buttons and flies that are not in the proper place and keeps me on a fairly regular sleep schedule with his own. Honestly, if you asked me which one of us is being trained I’m not sure I could tell you truthfully.  
Ah, yes, so in other news, your hive has been emptied.  
We went in and took a couple more things before it was, including basically your entire mechanical library. Meulin raided your wardrobe, presumably to drape over her face while she papsterbates and Rufioh took a couple of things too, which he told me were absolutely none of my business when I asked. There’s nothing left of much value that will be recycled or thrown on the dump or ground up for fertiliser for the fields.  
I’m not sure Eq is entirely comfortable with the idea of his childhood hive being handed over to people he is either unaware of or knows only vaguely, but he has yet to speak to me about it and I’m not about to broach the topic. Hopefully, the convoluted intricacies of the quadrants will distract him until the problem has passed. If there’s one thing I’m familiar with, it’s grief. Now that’s not to say I’m aware of any healthy ways to deal with grief, but hey, with all the experience I have, be it from you, Rufioh, Ida or the loads I created for myself, that has to count for something.  
Now apart from your hive being emptied there isn’t too much more of immediate significance to me or you to talk about.  
They’ve brought back the patrolling system, which is kind of a sulphurous blast from the past, isn’t it? I remember when we were in our last two summers of school that the patrols were all over the place. A minimum of two guards would be posted in every building in the school and sometimes they’d even sit in on the classes with us. The height of awkwardness, especially when pretending we were actually paying attention to the lessons instead of catching sneaky glimpses of the heavy weapons in strung over their shoulders.  
I didn’t even know we still had those heavy-duty weapons rotting away in the artillery cupboards. Ever since the lusii died out, what, like two summers ago, I thought we were done with weaponary. The village head made a big deal of melting it all down and turning it into materials that would be used in the construction of hives in the future.   
Now that I think about it, with the reappearance of the weapons, there has been a bit of a stirring amongst the shadier characters in our lovely society. Those weirdoes that hunch in doorways and stare at you as you walk by, inevitably making you walk faster. That nurse that wanders around the hospital seemingly without a schedule and asks you overly-personal questions, like favourite colours and classes at school even if you are obviously far too old to still be in the schooling system. That farmer that sleeps in his shed a week after every harvest seasons, as if his bare fields are really something he needs to protect.  
I would have counted myself among the creepy number the village head hid the weapons from at one point, but having a descendant under my care has officially made me a legitimate member of society. Besides, I managed to get the job done without the village head’s measly guns and swords. Give me an axe any day.   
My only problem about these new patrols is the fact that I’m going to be expected to go with a couple of them to examine the newest scorch-marks. Since the first time I was required to venture into the gods’ green nowhere and stare at nasty black goop, the black goop has been spreading at a steady, sinister rate. So far we have had to shut down a couple of the go-zones. None of the really big ones. We won’t be eating sugar lillies for a little while, but considering the whole system of bushes that grow them was wiped out by what looked like a giant ass-print, I’m not going to complain. I have some in my garden and there are already plans under way to use my samples to cultivate a new patch.  
So, yay for that. I can only hope this mysterious problem will have resolved itself by the winter. As you know, on this fickle moon our winters come in cycles. The last two have been mild and forgiving, so this one is certain to sink its icy teeth into the village’s ass and refuse to thaw until at least….ooh…say, two cycles into the summer? I’ll make sure to wrap Equius up in all kinds of warm, soft, knitted things stolen from Meulin’ closet.  
Now I don’t know how much more there is to talk about.  
Should I recount some of the little bonding moments that were cringe-worthy at the time and only a little bit cute in retrospect? No, I don’t think I want to bore you with a step-by-step description of how Equius and I managed to find a tiny island of common ground to stand on in an island of differences and suspicions. You were probably watching us closely anyway.  
Suffice to say, the kid is kind of growing on me.   
In the same way that a parasitic fungus grows up the stalk of a plant and squeezes until the head, the bloom, pops off into the dirt.


	12. Aries 6th 20413

Aries 6th 20413

Something a bit odd happened today.  
I was at the hospital helping the useless nurses mix up some of the new medicine we’re using to treat the lingering, obnoxious coughs left over from the last smoke that came off the forest (there hasn’t been one since the last one I told you about, but the symptoms cling like a needy matesprit) when an old, dishevelled troll whose gender I could not discern stumbled into the area. My first thought was to demand to know how they got to us, since the medicine mixing room is at the very back of the complex and under heavy guard in case of thieves. Then I noticed they had a gaping wound in their side, and got up to help them without a word.  
“While you’re up, can you get me some coffee?” asked one of the nurses.  
He was shocked to be on the receiving ends of one my patented ‘Damara is not amused’ glares and sputtered out an apology for infringing on my hospitality, or something babbling to that effect. When I turned back to help the old troll, they were gone. Completely gone.  
The nurses stared at me in confusion. Quickly, I realised they hadn’t seen the old troll, so I pretended I was getting some fresh ingredients from the cabinet. Once I had put something new on my desk to complete the illusion, I invented a reason for going out into the hall. The two guards posted at the front of the corridor claimed there had been no such person when I asked after the old troll. One of them timidly suggested I should take a break. Of course, you know me, I told the guard off as gently and threateningly as I possibly could. I am well aware I look like I’m not getting enough sleep, but it’s simply impolite to point it out.  
After a fruitless search in the closets and ablution blocks, I returned to the nurses and got on with my work, but I was jittery for the rest of the afternoon to say the least. How weird is it that I was the only one to see the old troll shuffle in here? Not all of them were bent over their work at the time they came in, and one of them had to have looked up to ask me for coffee. The old troll wouldn’t have had enough time to zip out the room when the nurse looked up. I should have seen them. There should have been droplets of brown blood on the floor, footprints trailing over the threshold- something!  
It freaked me out about as much as anything could.  
Needless to say, I had Rufioh take Eq for the evening and took a long, restful nap then made myself a giant pot of tea before I was ready to pretend nothing had happened. Maybe I really do need more sleep.  
It’s just that I have so much to worry about these days. What with the making of the new medicine then shouldering the responsibility of being the sole ‘expert’ in the village on the effects of the poisons seeping through the forest, which I still have to eat from, knowing all kinds of nasty contaminants have been smeared all over the place. The crops near the borders of the forest have so far been left untouched. I fear that the high fences might not be enough anymore. Hell, the beast might eschew the entire idea of the damned fences and the borders they mark entirely, and not just for the specific purpose of tormenting me! This isn’t to say that I live in a state of constant fear, though.   
Those are both wearisome and impossible to maintain. After that little visit I still suspect you had a hand in orchestrating, I have felt uneasy most of the time. But just uneasy. I am often distracted by more demanding concerns, such as what I’m going to feed Eq for lunch or if Rufioh can see too much chest in the top I’m going to wear to get Eq or if Kankri’s hitherto concealed affections for me are going to make another, even more cringey appearance when I least expect it. Lots of little things that mount up into a veritable tower of problems, swaying this way and that and threatening to engulf me entirely unless I devote my constant and full attention to it all.  
I’m about ready to give Eq back. If I’d known he was going to cause me this many problems, I would have faked a dying note for you that stipulated Rufioh should take him. Too late to turn back, I suppose. He’s dented my floor and weeded my garden, and now there’s no getting rid of him.

Before the strange episode in the medicine room, I ran into another of our buddies in town. Possibly my least favourite troll out of our circle, after the conceited Meenah and the dribbling wreck that is left of Mituna. What business did Meulin have with me, you ask?   
She wanted to talk about how I was going to be handling having other wrigglers around me, acting under the assumption that I am someday going to take a bite out of Nepeta when Eq’s back is turned. Well not literally that, but she certainly communicated an impression in a similar vein as we talked. Well, I listened with a semi-sour expression and grunted noncommittally when she asked me a question. She talked to me about not letting them go near the fences, which are only a couple hundred yards behind the house. I assured her I would probably notice if the kids went tearing out of my garden, across the fields and towards the giant fences, and that I would definitely hear them when they got stuck at the top and shouted for my help to get down.   
As much as she adores Eq, she seems to be afraid that Nepeta might convince him to tear open the fences for some kind of adventure. Eq has never struck me as the kind of person that would allow himself to be manipulated unless he had some kind of ulterior motive to go along with it. He looks to me like the kind of person, as Aranea’s brat so aptly puts it, with a lot of ‘irons in the fire’. At first I assumed it was just shyness that pinned him to the background of most every interaction, but now I realise that it’s not entirely that. He observes quite carefully before he takes part in anything.  
Right now, it means he’s just slightly more aware and cautious of his surroundings than his peers. When he’s older and his methods are more polished, I’m sure he’ll be a force to be reckoned with while creating the image that he’s some kind of stumbling fool too strong for his own good. If there’s one thing I can appreciate in a person, it’s an ability to make people underestimate you then punch them in the teeth with the much-due payback.  
Or maybe I’m over-estimating him. He’s barely past his sixth summer, after all.   
So, back to Meulin. Gods I digress far too much in these letters. The bottom line with Meulin is that she doesn’t think I’m responsible enough to handle Eq nor the children he has brought with him, like flies swarming around a wound. I disagree, because he has yet to die so far and he seems to be only getting more contented. If Meulin’s concerns had any real basis to them, I’m sure another of our circle would have approached me with something similar to say by now. You know how they love prodding their noses into every possible issue with insults thinly disguised as helpful advice.  
Even Porrim gives me the odd approving nod when I do something ‘good’. You know she’d rather pitch me head-first into a lake than offer me a word of kindness, so surely I must be doing something essentially alright.  
Let Meulin have her freak-out. Ever since you died, she’s been degrading. She never smiles or laughs anymore, much to my relief. Gods her laugh was irritating. On top of that, streaks matching her blood colour have begun to grow into her hair. That common sign of stress is more common among trolls past their fortieth summer, but hey, Meulin went half-deaf early, so why wait to age in order?  
Her business if she wants to pitch herself into the depths of a depression. It annoys me immensely to watch her mooning about when I compare her to the rest of them.  
Sure they’re sad, bewildered by the cruel twist of fate and none of them joke around as much. When we’re together the lack of your presence hangs above us all like a thunder-clouds. But they haven’t allowed to let it cripple them the way Meulin has. The way she looks right now, you can tell she would have hastened to follow you into oblivion if she didn’t have a little kid hanging onto her sleeve.  
Actually, speaking of missing you, Rufioh and I had a weird moment last week.  
It’s entirely escaped my pan until now. Blocked it out to escape the trauma of the event, I suppose. So I was getting ready to leave Eq for another night of freedom and joy and messing around with the tiny cripple he has apparently adopted as a blood relative now. Rufioh and I watched them with a helpless kind of resentment, marvelling at how bloody happy they were just to be around each other.  
Actually, that was more of Rufioh’s thought-process than mine, I’m sure. He’s far more inclined towards those sentimental thoughts. I myself was wondering if I could get away with snapping off one of his amazingly huge horns (made me jealous of the bulge you got to contend with when you had a night to yourselves, those horns did) and using it as a hunting horn. Or just mounting it on my wall. My thoughts towards him were not positive or affection, but somehow Rufioh failed to read the atmosphere as faintly hostile.  
Before I know it, he’s talking about his traumas and troubles to me.  
“Sometimes I wake up,” he says with this theatrically miserable expression “And I think I can still feel him next to me. Like, for a moment I completely forget he’s dead and I swear to the gods I can feel his arm around my waist. Then it hits me. Every morning, all over again.”  
This is pretty much one of the longest bits of speech I’ve ever heard out of his squawk blaster that wasn’t butchered by copious ‘uh’s and ‘um’s and the like.  
How was I supposed to respond to that? I didn’t, wondering what the hell he expected from me. He interpreted my silence as permission to keep talking.  
This time, he had a single tear making its way down his face. He turned away in shame to wipe it off “I don’t know how I deal with it. I really don’t know how I’m still going…it’s like…I always tell myself at the start of the day that I just have to get to the end of the day, then I can collapse and grieve as hard and as much as I want. But when it’s time to sleep…I can’t cry. I just lie there staring at the ceiling for hours, the whole night, sometimes. And the next morning I tell myself I can just ‘do it’ and the whole thing happens all over again. I don’t know how many more ‘just do it’s I’ve got in me before I collapse, Damara.”  
I stared at Eq, willing him to look up and sense the issue and come to my rescue. Nothing of the sort happened. A couple of second ticked by, and I knew I had to say something.  
“He’d like that, I think.”   
Rufioh stared at me. His gander globes were turning brown with tears “Excuse me?”  
I rolled back and forth on the balls of my feet “Rus is the kind of person who would like to be mourned. You know him. He pretends he doesn’t want much from anyone, but secretly he’d like us all to be bowing at his feet.”  
He looked at me like I had just crawled out of a hole in the ground “I’m pretty sure you’re talking about yourself.”  
I considered it again, a little harder “No, not really. Rus was sorta…well, he was the kind of person who’d want to know he had made enough of an effect to be missed.”  
“Can you stop bouncing around the, the, uh, the tenses when you talk about him? It’s really fucking irritating.”  
I had to grin a little at him because it was unnerving to hear him talk without the stutter and I was glad to have it back. Disgusted with me, he went into the hive and closed the door. I told the kids to scream if they broke a calcium stick and took my leave peacefully.  
So there you have it.  
Apparently, the time, energy and sex you expended on Rufioh wasn’t entirely a waste. He may be a poor use of good atmosphere and skin, but he still misses you and is still very much in love with you. Knowing the way Rufioh imprints, he’s likely to be a little bit in love with you for the rest of his life. There may be more matesprits in the future that he looks to with the same sugary, mooning expression he reserved for you, someone else who can make his acid-filled gastro-sack do somersaults every time they approach. Personally, I like Rufioh better when he’s single. I cannot tell you how relieving it is to know I won’t have to watch you two sucking face anymore.   
Rus, as much as I loved you, I swear I wanted to scrape your face of with a cheese grater every time I had to watch you guys kissing.  
I was going to catch you up a little bit more on the situation, but Eq’s outside. It’s the middle of the night and way past his damned bed time, so I’m going to need to investigate this.


End file.
